















































































































































THE RED-BLOOD 


NOVELS BY 

HAROLD H. ARMSTRONG 

The Groper, 1919 
Zell, 1921 

For Richer, For Poorer, 1922 
The Red-Blood, 1923 



/ 

THE RED-BLOOD 


A Novel 


BY 

HAROLD H. ARMSTRONG 

11 V 



“We have divided men into 
Red-bloods and Mollycoddles.” 

—G. Lowes Dickinson, “Appearances.” 


i > 
> > » 


> 


HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 


NEW YORK AND LONDON 









1 


/ 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface .. . ix 

BOOK I 

I. Two Encounters. 3 

II. The Graveyard. 12 

III. His Mother. 23 

IV. The Queen’s Inn.30 

V. He Has a Patient.41 

VI. In the Tent. 52 

VII. The Cult of B. Franklin. 66 

VIII. The Good Book. 75 

IX. Suny Grizard Speaks.83 

X. Amos Milk Bends the Knee.89 

XI. He Presents the Album. 93 

XII. Embarkation . 100 

BOOK II 

I. How to Manage Women.107 

II. The Foss Family . I 3 I 

III. More About the Management of Women . . 161 

IV. He Holds On . 185 

V. Jenny. 2I 4 

• • 

Vll 














CONTENTS 
BOOK III 


I. The Mausoleum.. . .227 

II. Ennui.252 

III. Frustration.270 

IV. Enticement.285 

V. The Shorn Lamb.298 

VI. The People's Paladin. 330 

BOOK IV 

I. The Good Scout.355 

II. The Gay Gossoon.388 

III. Misgivings. 410 

IV. The Rarer Altitudes. 435 

V. Peripety.447 

BOOK V 


I. You Are Old, Father William . 
II. When Life Slips Its Tether . 


. 465 
• 472 












PREFACE 


There is something rather comical, I suppose, in my 
present decision to write a biography of my grandfather, 
the late Hon. Wellington Dennison McNicol. 

For he and I are highly antithetical types. My grand¬ 
father in many ways was both ignorant and vulgar, and 
consequently quite en rapport with the life about him; 
I am hyperfastidious, aloof, book learned—and miserably 
out of joint with the man on the street. He drew his wis¬ 
dom fresh from raw life, while I have ludicrously con¬ 
tinued attempting to fit life into the resonant copy-book 
theories of what life ought to be. My grandfather 
focused instinctively upon making money, being success¬ 
ful, getting himself elected to office—and I sit in my small 
room among my books, a perfect specimen of dry rot, 
and speculate concerning the relative ethical values of 
selfishness and unselfishness. 

Why then should I stay out of bed nights to write a 
biography of him? I—who never really knew him, and 
must, therefore, often eke out meager hearsay with 
dubious inference? 

First, because, being so different from myself, he 
absorbs me. The two types will always exist: the con¬ 
structive and the destructive; the creative and the criti¬ 
cal. One must do, the other see. Each is indispensable 
—and curiously interesting—to the other. And yet the 
oddest aspect of my grandfather’s character is the curi¬ 
ous blending of the two types in him. Predominantly, of 
course, he was a doer, a constructor; yet always lurking 

ix 



X 


PREFACE 


in the background, ready to emerge at the strangest and 
most inconvenient times, hovered this other self, this 
inexplicable strain of cloudy temperament, this strange 
blur of idealism, of starved Celtic sentimentalism. Note, 
for example, the incredible streak of political utopianism 
that brought his public career to so disastrous a con¬ 
clusion. 

In the second place, I have a genuine affection for 
him. The life essence was in him, and he had certain 
indubitable propria of greatness. A certain marred 
nobility—yes, in the larger sense, he was even a good 
man. And because I have this affection for him, to some 
extent I understand him. I want to explain him, to wipe 
out some of the ignorant judgments of his memory. I 
want to paint a three-dimensional portrait of him—per¬ 
haps even a fourth-dimensional! He has been dead now 
a scant twenty years, yet there survives to posterity no 
authentic record of him—save that staring bronze statue 
on Belle Isle. Authentic? That stiff forensic pose, that 
arched chest, that sanctimoniously unruffled brow— 
authentic? Oh, my beloved grandfather! They have 
made you out a pitiful thing of virtue and cold metal. 
Where is that warmly beating heart of yours, that mortal 
flesh and blood, that crude force, that errant passion— 
that was you? 

Again, I have a very real admiration for that latter 
nineteenth-century era. Nothing brings a more poignant 
emotion to my breast than to turn over the pages of 
Harper’s Weekly or some other illustrated periodical of 
that bygone age. Those marvelous whiskers, those for¬ 
midable bustles! Those belching locomotives! That 
pervading air of steam-heat morality! Somehow, to me, 
the period seems youthful. Late self-conscious youth, if 
you will, but none the less youth—the precursor of that 


PREFACE 


xi 


fleshy disillusioned middle age upon which this nation 
now seems embarked. Yes, I admire both those times 
and the people who vitalized them. We have not marched 
thence so many parasangs as w T e like to imagine. The 
young bucks of 1950 will fairly snort at us. Life is 
comparison. 

And lastly, I expect to get a good deal of pleasure out 
of writing the book. That, I dare say, is my principal 
motive. A hope of surcease from the self-accusation of 
lonely sterile hours. A vehicle of expression—something 
to justify me to myself. Without that, a man dies. 

It suffices. “Andiam! Incoviinciate!” 

Wellington McNicol Pasco. 

Detroit, 1922. 













N. 


BOOK ONE: HIS RESOLVES 





















THE RED-BLOOD 


BOOK ONE: HIS RESOLVES 


CHAPTER I 


TWO ENCOUNTERS 


I 


S he reached the top of this last and steepest Cana- 



dian hill, his eyes left the oncoming thundercloud 
and rested upon the muddy road that now abruptly came 
into view. Two hundred yards ahead he saw a horse 
and buckboard, and a driver curiously bent forward. 
The horse—palpably scrawny, even at this distance— 
stood still; and now the man in the buckboard sat slowly 
upright. But his face was still invisible, being totally 
eclipsed by the bottom of the two-gallon jug which he 
straightway began to decant into the customary orifice. 

The scowl of unconscious fatigue deepened slightly on 
the pedestrian’s face. A familiar enough spectacle: some 
gawk of a farmer jolting home from the Cartwright mill 
and distillery, already well liquored up with the whisky 
his tailings had paid for—yet he hated it obscurely. He 
had no objection to whisky; everyone drank it, including 
himself; his medical education, in fact, proved it indispen¬ 
sable. But this dull sottishness—the wastefulness of it! 

“Damned sawney!” he muttered, and thought fleetingly 
of his father. 


3 


4 


THE RED-BLOOD 


He continued to plod on through the viscous mire, his 
scrutiny constantly reverting to the buckboard ahead. 
He remarked the absence of the usual worn-out farmer’s 
wife, dumbly awaiting her master’s pleasure; and it oc¬ 
curred to him as odd that the man should have been 
bartering grain for whisky in April. 

The carefully wrapped photograph album, a present 
for Minnie Onweller, slid from under his relaxed left 
arm and splashed into a scummy puddle. 

“By the Lord Harry!” He quickly deposited his bag 
and new medicine case, and rescued the album. Then, 
through his dismayed preoccupation, he heard a peculiar 
sniggering laugh that somehow contrived to stir up in 
him all his deepest hatreds. 

He looked up quickly from the soiled photograph 
album and saw the ancient buckboard approaching him, 
some twenty feet away. His scowl became formidable 
when he perceived that the driver was Aleck Grizard; 
his whole body braced for the encounter. 

“Whoa!” Grizard’s intent was amiable enough, it 
seemed. He reached for the jug under the seat, pulled 
out the twisted paper plug. “Join me, Denny McNicol? 
No? Then I’ll take a swig mysel’.” 

Again the upturned chalice. The young man in the 
road could see the drinker’s bony Adam’s apple rising 
convulsively under the elevated mass of red beard. God! 
How he would like to seize that raw throat in both his 
hands! But he stood impassive an instant, then silently 
gathered his bags and started on. 

“Hey, there! W T ait a minute!” Grizard almost dropped 
the jug. The younger man was now directly opposite 
the buckboard. He could have reached out and struck 
that crafty, stealthily cruel face—yes, and gouged out 
those watery, slinking little eyes. 

“I’ve naught to say to you.” 


TWO ENCOUNTERS 


5 


“Well, happen I hiv to you, Denny. Better call you 
Doc McNicol now, ay?” He laughed in his whining way, 
and McNicol stirred uneasily. “Happen I’ve just been 
looking for you in town, ay?” 

“Well?” He frowned at the black horse’s pitiably 
concave buttock. 

“Like to ’ve been your first patient, Doc. Yes, sir. 
Learn anything ’bout confinement cases while you been 
in school? ’Cause the woman’s having another baby.” 
Once more his rankling chuckle. “She wanted me t’ git 
you, but your ma didn’t know when you’d be coming. 
So I got Doc Milk.” 

Young McNicol thrust his slightly flushed face forward 
an inch or two. “Before I’d budge, Grizard, you and 
yours could burn in hell.” 

“How that come, Denny?” 

“Scars on my back from your poker. D’you fancy I’ve 
forgotten?” McNicol’s anger was getting beyond control; 
of its own accord, his right fist trembled near that odious 
face. “My turn’s coming some day not so far off—d’you 
hear?” 

“ ’Twas all for your soul’s best good, my boy. The 
Lord came to me and commanded me to save you from 
everlasting damnation-” 

McNicol had crowded in between the buckboard’s 
wheels; his face, beginning to be contorted with passion, 
was not a foot away from Grizard’s. 

“And did the Lord tell you to beat me and call me 
bastard?” he shouted. “Some day I’ll be killing you for 
that!” 

At this, Grizard leaned slightly back, and with sur¬ 
prising celerity reached into the interior of his heavy 
fullcloth coat and produced a pistol, which he leveled at 
his assailant. 

“Still Satan’s own,” he jeered. “Happen I’d best put 



6 


THE RED-BLOOD 


a shot through your belly—in self-defense.” His eyes 
were cunningly meditative. “Bastard!” 

The youth at the side of the buckboard was aware of 
a sensation of creeping life along the top of his skull. 
But he was so replete with fury there seemed no room 
for fear. He decided to hurl himself upon Grizard, risk¬ 
ing the bullet. 


ii 

In that pregnant instant they both became conscious 
of the impact of hoofs on the road, and each cautiously 
glancing around, perceived a top buggy careening rapidly 
nearer. 

Grizard’s gloating smile disappeared in a last flicker 
of indecision. He replaced the pistol and had brief resort 
to the whisky jug. 

“Hurry up, Doc,” he called to the now adjacent rig, 
and with a final truculent glance at his late antagonist, 
drove on. 

Under ordinary circumstances, McNicol would have 
grinned his pleasure at seeing Dr. Amos Milk, after a 
separation of nearly two years; and he might at the very 
least have been expected to express some grateful appre¬ 
ciation to his rescuer. Instead he stood a moment longer, 
staring implacably after the buckboard. 

Doctor Milk's wheezing voice recalled him. “Having 
some trouble, ay?” 

McNicol turned about sullenly. “He would have shot 
me.” 

“Eh, what’s that? Shot you! ” Doctor Milk, ever since 
his protege could remember, had suffered from some 
affliction of the vocal cords; it required a definite mus¬ 
cular effort for him to produce the semblance of a voice; 
and even so, the result was a most singular frayed and 
breathy falsetto gasp. 


TWO ENCOUNTERS 


7 

Abruptly there entered his owlish eyes the glint of 
recognition. 

“It’s Denny McNicol, I’m thinking.” 

The scowling youth’s faculties slowly reconverged. 
“Yes, Doctor.” 

“Didn’t know you at first,” strained the venerable 
Milk’s earnest voice. 

McNicol by this time was able to look at his medical 
preceptor with friendly curiosity. For two years, before 
he had entered the medical school of the University of 
Michigan, Doctor Milk and he had maintained the rela¬ 
tionship of teacher and pupil. By day and by night 
they had ridden about the country together in this self¬ 
same old top buggy, behind this very strong, if inelegant, 
gray mare, the meanwhile Doctor Milk issued pearls of 
theoretical and practical wisdom. Twenty months ago, 
the physician had scrawled out the coveted certificate for 
the university authorities. 

“Yes, Doctor. A bad penny always shows up, you 
know.” The young medical graduate was beginning to 
smile again. It gave him a curious sense of perspective, 
a realization of the lapse of time, to come thus upon the 
ancient Milk. Long before his apprenticeship was over, 
he had achieved an amused condescension for the old 
man. Milk was no doctor, he felt; had no science, no 
curative faculty, at all. Practically, he could handle the 
ordinary ailments of the little Ontario community; but he 
was no better than a midwife, an ignorant old woman 
with a little dangerous knowledge. And now—to the 
young graduate, fresh from the founts of knowledge— 
old Milk was a prodigious joke as a physician. Person¬ 
ally, however, he still cherished some contemptuous affec¬ 
tion for the decrepit bachelor. 

As he stood in the rich ooze of the road, shaking hands, 
he could, in fact, scarcely help laughing outright. Doc 


8 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Milk was so consciously and heavily solemn. By look¬ 
ing the part of a venerable wise man, he made the people 
believe he was genuinely sapient. He never appeared 
without his dilapidated frock coat and his ancient bell¬ 
shaped top hat. Yet of late years his hold had loosened. 
Even before his pupil’s departure, a few people had begun 
to commit the sacrilege of ridicule. Certainly that impos¬ 
ing fringe of yellowish-white whiskers under his round 
chin, those learned spectacles halfway down his red- 
tipped nose, that small tight mouth, those round, curi¬ 
ously burnished Scotch eyes, could never fool McNicol 
again. 

“You old quack!” he silently addressed his quondam 
mentor. 

Yet this was the man who had first thrilled him with 
the flaming ambition to become a doctor! 

“How’ve you been?” he asked, simulating his old def¬ 
erence. 

“Right well—but busy. Too busy to cough.” 

This, McNicol recalled, was one of the physician’s 
three jokes, and he laughed appreciatively. “What’s the 
news in town?” For the instant he found himself pre¬ 
occupied with the bulbous end of Doctor Milk’s long 
nose—more particularly, with the tiny purple veins that 
rose to its red surface so profusely, there to expire 
abruptly. 

“No serious cases just now. Ain’t nobody died since 
your small brother.” 

McNicol nodded, a little sadly. “My mother wrote 
me.” 

“Sorry I had to lose him.” The old physician’s shallow 
concern at once flowed into a deeper instinct of self¬ 
justification. “The only patient I’ve lost this year. On 
my way now to see Aleck Grizard’s woman. Ay, I’m 
busy. My practice was never so large.” 


TWO ENCOUNTERS 


9 


The way he issued the word “practice,” the slight 
tilting back of his senescent head, the perceptible 
widening of his misty eyes, gave his young disciple 
some prescience of the impending skirmish. Truly it 
was a somewhat difficult situation. Doctor Milk had 
given him his start, in a way; there was that slight debt, 
even though he felt he had more than repaid the obliga¬ 
tion. Yet now he was returning to Cartwright, young, 
infinitely better trained, ten times more competent, to 
filch the old man’s patients away from him, if he could. 
If he could! His slow sense of humor began leavening 
his tetchiness. 

“Glad to hear of it,” he responded, with becoming 
gravity. “I’ve thought all along there ought to be two 
doctors here.” 

It was royal comedy to watch old Milk’s bleary face 
struggle valiantly against his anxiety. He moved his 
lower jaw up and down slightly; for the instant, with his 
pensile hooked nose and crisp whiskers rather short and 
upcurling, he was an extremely apprehensive Punch. 

“Nay, nay, Denny—I wouldn’t go so far as that. I 
can tend to it all.” Doubtless the old fish conceived 
he was being very crafty. “I was intending to write 
you. I hear there’s a good opening for a green young 
fellow down at Elora. My advice is for you to go 
there and bury your mistakes. Maybe in five or ten 
years-” 

His condescension was stupendous. Young Doctor 
McNicol, himself none too agile mentally, had the un¬ 
usual and pleasurably feline sensation of toying with an 
inferior, mouselike intellect. 

“I’ve given it thought myself,” he countered, with an 
expression of conscientious uncertainty. “And I always 
end in wondering what keeps you here. Cartwright’s all 
well enough for a young chap like myself, but for a man 



10 


THE RED-BLOOD 


of your professional reputation! You ought to go to 
Guelph—or why not Toronto? Even London? Why, 
you’re known all over Europe!” 

He had not intended to spread it on so thick; he 
stopped and watched Amos Milk’s pale eyes doubtfully. 

But the old sham scarcely blinked. He believed it, 
or at least he thought his junior believed it. 

“Oh yes, I dare say.” He defied the press of business, 
and took time to cough. “I’ve had letters from the other 
side, of course—but duty comes first with a man like me. 
My patients hereabouts wouldn’t hear on it.” 

The unmitigated hypocrite! Yet even as McNicol 
scoffed he was taking note of the old man’s distinctive 
manner of speech, only partially abraded by the dialect, 
half Scotch, half provincial Canadian, that pervaded 
Wellington County. Fresh from twenty months in the 
States, he could distinguish such things. Doctor Milk, 
he knew, had had advantages as a boy; he had traveled 
all over Europe before emigrating to the Dominion. 

“A fine lot of patients for a physician of your stand¬ 
ing,” he nevertheless pursued. “Grizard, for example. 
A fat fee you’ll get out of him for your night’s work.” 

Doctor Milk seemed a bit crestfallen. “A new patient 
he is.” 

“I reckon so. Surprised he’d even call a doctor for 
his wife.” 

“Kind of worried for once,” explained Milk. “She 
almost died when the last baby came. Kidney poisoning, 
my diagnosis.” It was ludicrous how his difficult wheez¬ 
ing sounds lent everything he said an air of profound 
earnestness. “But they’re not all Aleck Grizards. The 
Gough family, now.” 

“Gough?” 

“Ay. Came here while you’ve been gone. Own the 
mill now. Rich. Big new house. And say, Denny”—he 


TWO ENCOUNTERS 


ii 


leaned over with confidential waggishness, till his listener 
must draw back to avoid being enmeshed in the reticula¬ 
tion of that venerable white beard—“wait till you see 
young Jenny Gough. I’m a-tell. ; n’ you the Onweller girl 
had best watch out.” 

McNicol was not displeased. “We’ll see about that.” 

Doctor Milk’s proximity to his former student gave 
him another thought. With paternal familiarity he drew 
aside the younger man’s coat and reached for one of the 
cheroots that protruded from a waistcoat pocket. 

“The mentor’s tithe,” Milk laughed breathily and 
decapitated the cheroot with deplorable fangs. “Well, 
must be jogging along now.” He became solemnly appre¬ 
hensive once more. “Best think over that opening in 
Elora. No room for you here, Denny boy.” 

It so happened that Dr. Wellington Dennison McNicol 
had come back home with a disturbing doubt in his 
mind; a profound skepticism whether, after all these long 
laborious years of preparation, he still really wanted to 
practice medicine; a half-expressed, dim desire to throw 
his new profession into the scuppers and go back to the 
adventure, the wide-roving opportunity, of the States. 
He had intended to tell Doctor Milk something of all this 
uncertainty, but his preceptor’s dull condescension, the 
challenge to his own abilities, made him hesitate. Then, 
too—the rare fun of keeping the old boy on the anxious 
seat a while longer! 

“No, Doctor—here I am and here I stay. Even if I 
don’t make a shilling a twelvemonth, it’s worth while to 
me—just the opportunity of seeing a great physician like 
yourself at work.” 


CHAPTER II 


THE GRAVEYARD 

I 

CTILL merry with inward amusement, he surveyed 
^ Doctor Milk’s departing buggy a moment longer; 
then, his face settling again into its habitual belligerent 
intentness, he plowed on through the mud once more. 
His heavy stoga boots were encysted in the sticky stuff, 
and even the nethermost six inches of his tight tweed 
trousers. 

“A damn’ fool for coming over to-night,” he swore 
aloud. Much wiser to have waited for the Drayton mail 
wagon to-morrow morning. This impatience, this never 
satisfied restlessness of his, was forever thus catching him 
up, miring him. 

His displeasure was in no way abated by the increasing 
certainty of rain. The storm-cloud encroached rapidly 
on the fresh, slightly inclement west wind. 

When he came to the Cartwright graveyard he deter¬ 
mined to cut through it, thus saving himself the long 
walk around by the road and affording himself some shel¬ 
ter should the storm break. 

As he carefully deposited his bags and that precious 
album on the other side of the zigzagging rail fence and 
was in the act of throwing one leg over the top rail, his 
eye caught a white blur some eight feet up on the trunk 

of the fir tree that stood just inside the graveyard fence. 

12 


THE GRAVEYARD 


13 


He retraced a few steps. The white blur resolved itself 
into a cardboard placard; on it he read: 

PROFESSOR EVANTUREL’S 

Mammoth Medical Exposition and Minstrel Show 

At Cartwright, April 16-21, 1863 
See the Latest Discoveries of the Scientific World! 

Admittance Free. Come One, Come All! 

The time and place were in a red-crayon scrawl; the 
rest was printed in bold-faced type. 

McNicoPs first interest, slightly amused, was turning 
into obscure rancor even before he had once more thrown 
his leg over the graveyard fence. He was not given to 
self-analysis; his prejudices, deep seated and powerful as 
they were, seemed frequently inexplicable. Halfway over 
the fence, his peculiar resentment had so possessed him 
that he dextrously mounted the top rail, snatched Pro¬ 
fessor EvanturePs poster from the fir trunk, then—on 
the ground again—tore it to small pieces and threw it 
into the A.pril wind. 

Characteristically, his justifications followed action. 

“White-livered humbugs!” His broad, surprisingly 
full mouth drew even farther down at the comers. “And 
in a cemetery!” 

Characteristically also, once having discharged his 
instinct into action, he straightway forgot the episode. 
Another recollection overran his mind vividly. It seemed 
he could never traverse the ancient burial ground without 
encountering this poignant arresting specter of his boy¬ 
hood. The graveyard seemed not to have changed in the 
slightest particular during the intervening fifteen years. 
He trod the same dead discouraged grass competing 




14 


THE RED-BLOOD 


unsuccessfully with the smothering quilt of pine and hem¬ 
lock needles; this same soft path cutting across the rear 
of the small plot. He beheld the same neglected weather¬ 
worn flat headstones, leaning obliquely forward or back¬ 
ward, wistfully staring at the earth or sky. On some 
graves, the ruins of wreaths and potted flowers, which 
might indeed have been there the night of that frantic 
passionate runaway escape of his. 

A raindrop struck his hand, clenched fiercely around 
the handle of his medicine case, unnoticed. That handle 
was Aleck Grizard’s corded throat; his hand grew white 
with the fierceness of compression. 

He stopped short. 

“Bastard!” 

Grizard’s hot little eyes stared at him. His mind 
skipped back from this last tense encounter to the squalid 
log cabin five miles south in the woods; Suny Grizard’s 
white, imploring face; the sting of the crooked poker end 
upon his back and legs; Aleck Grizard’s frenzied face— 
and that mysterious, ugly word, heaped upon him with 
each blow. 

For a moment he stood stark in the unperceived, gently 
augmented susurrus of the spring rain. The eyes were 
closed, as if from the pungency of that bitter recollection; 
but above them, his broad low forehead, slightly knobbed 
over each brow, intimated a certain indomitable resolute¬ 
ness; so, too, underneath, the high cheek-bones rising 
from the hollow of his cheeks, and the heavy, insensitive 
jaw. His whole figure, only average in size, but muscu- 
larly close-fibered—swaying slightly now with the inten¬ 
sity of his emotions—seemed to give off an almost visible 
effluence of young and irresistible strength. 

The flux of feeling passed off. His eyes, when he 
opened them, chanced to be resting directly, almost fate¬ 
fully, upon a white handkerchief at one side of the path 


THE GRAVEYARD 


i5 

ahead. Dully he picked it up, became slowly aware 
of the counter-irritant of curiosity. A woman’s hand¬ 
kerchief, round and small, of fine linen, bordered with 
Valenciennes lace, yielding a faint perfume. A girl’s 
handkerchief, not a woman’s—young feminine vanity 
among moldering gravestones. 

He studied the embroidered monogram. “G. J.” Per¬ 
haps “J. G.” He had by now quite lost his bitterness of 
mood. Who was she? He reflected, heavily, it could not 
be Minnie Onw^eller; her handkerchiefs would not be 
of such extravagant fineness, either. “G. J.” He began 
recalling the names of the various girls of the town. 
Pleasing sentimental implications pricked him; he had 
a vision of himself, a Prince Charming, romantically 
searching for his Cartwright Cinderella. 

Water seeped through the cloth cap to his scalp; he 
realized abruptly it was raining hard. Ahead, the woods 
grew denser again, and as he ran forward he remem¬ 
bered the shelter at the far end of the graveyard where 
as a runaway boy he had slept all night. He could see 
it now, two pine trees whose trunks oddly crossed fifteen 
feet above the ground, and the protective roof of their 
thickly intermeshed lower branches. 

But as he rounded a final slight twist in the path he 
heard the sharp crepitation of broken branches, saw two 
figures hurriedly emerge from beneath the crisscrossed 
trees. He stopped short and stared. The black thunder¬ 
cloud overhead had intensified the habitual obscurity of 
the woods, and there were intervening patches of under¬ 
growth; but as the two figures quickly disappeared down 
the path, he descried that one was a young woman. 

He took possession of the shelter, smiling grimly. 

“Sorry—but my best thanks!” 

He could not be certain, but there had been a certain 
guiltiness in their quick flight; and in his first view of 


i6 


THE RED-BLOOD 


them, a suggestion of sudden standing apart from each 
other. The savor of scandal possessed him. Who were 
they? He had not recognized either of them; their 
apparel, in fact, intimated they were not natives of the 
district. The man had worn a brown bowler hat and a 
long coat; the woman a dark gray pelisse. But what had 
they been up to? No woman of gentility took cross¬ 
country walks in these days when a certain delicate sickli¬ 
ness was deemed the vogue; yet the girl definitely did 
suggest gentility to McNicol. 

Slowly he stared down at the round frippery of the 
lace handkerchief. 

“So—ho!” He nodded with profound astuteness. 
“Well, my queen, I'm afraid your fine feathers are in 
for a wetting.” 

For the rain had become a torrent. Few drops per¬ 
colated to him, but he was near enough the edge of the 
limestone escarpment to discern the open space of the 
underlying valley, to catch some sense of vast inunda¬ 
tion. All at once, a terrific report dazed him; a flash of 
volatile flame danced before his eves; the whole forest 
seemed to shrink from some appalling blow. The cata- 
clvsmic vibrations died awav; not more than twoscore feet 
away he could see a stricken electrocuted hemlock, its 
bark stripped off in a long spiral groove, still standing 
in mute death agony. 

Doctor McNicol’s nerves were sound; the tragic over¬ 
tones escaped his ear: he could even smile. 

“Yet some fools tell you the safest place is under a 
tree,”' he muttered. 

And there had been just such a storm, he recalled, that 
April night fifteen years ago. Yes, here it was precisely 
that he had shivered with cold and wet, and fitfully slept. 
The shelter was identical—yet now he was vaguely con¬ 
scious of changes. That fresh monument ten feet away, 


THE GRAVEYARD 


17 


for example, and those four footstones nearer. Looking 
about, he saw other stones, not yet time-eroded, and 
remembered he was in the newer part of the graveyard. 

The monument near him was a poor-enough thing, 
a truncated column some five feet high; but what slowly 
riveted him was the name embossed in large characters 
along its base, under the graven open book and the 
motto, “Asleep in Jesus.” 

The name was, quite unmistakably: 

MCNICOL 

Of course—he nodded his head knowingly—the new 
family monument his mother had written him about, with 
just the faintest touch of pride showing through her grief. 
But the queer coincidence of it—that this very spot, so 
acutely a part of himself, should have become the family 
burial ground. Perhaps one day, he too—. Phlegmatic as 
he was, the thing took hold of him. 

The rain had slackened for the moment, and he ap¬ 
proached the footstones curiously, vaguely wondering 
why there were four. He drubbed his memory. No, only 
two of the family had died. 

The first stone bore the words: 

baby— 1856 

His little sister who had died in infancy. He could not 
even recall her name. 

The next: 


Then: 


FATHER 
1820— 

MOTHER 

1819- 


i8 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Grave markers for the yet-alive! He thought it a little 
gruesome, some odd perversion of vanity. His mother, 
he fancied, would doubtless set great store on that pitiful 
little proof of her existence. But his scoffing, errant 
father! How he would laugh, bitterly, if he knew of it. 

McNicol half expected the last footstone w T ould be 
dedicated to himself; but this was the inscription: 

ANGUS 

1855-1863 

His brother, carried off not two months ago with some 
strange intestinal inflammation. Perhaps he might have 
saved him if he had been here; but old Milk! He snorted 
contemptuously. 

His sneer faded out into a very genuine grief. He had 
fancied Angus more than any of the other children. 
He remembered his curly hair, his bright, intelligent eye— 
a certain promise of quick-wittedness, of joyousness, quite 
apart from the stolid quality of the others. And now, 
a fresh grave. 

A final spurt of rain, a sudden access of wind, sent him 
back to his shelter. Startled, he heard a faint and in¬ 
finitely plaintive moaning overhead; it issued, he soon 
perceived, from the close, slightly undulating embrace of 
those still youthful pine trees; yet he continued to stare 
upward at the mournful sound, captivated. The com¬ 
plaining ceased. He glanced about him once more, his 
thick sensibilities strangely pierced; his eyes flitted from 
other new gravestones back to his small brother’s. At 
that, a sharp gust of departing wind twitched from the 
reluctant pines an angrier, more resentful note; and all 
at once the air seemed full of the fierce echoing protests 
of the young untimely dead. 


THE GRAVEYARD 


19 


He shook himself free with an effort. 

“Better clear out of this,” he grunted. 

Abruptly the setting sun enkindled the woods to a 
mahogany glow, and he stepped forth through shadows 
that were almost purple into another world, a more char¬ 
acteristic mood. 


11 

A mood of strong self-assurance, of courage and am¬ 
bition. The view from the brink of the limestone escarp¬ 
ment, on which he now paused and again deposited his 
luggage, had always evoked such emotions. Thrice be¬ 
fore in his life he had stood thus, looking out over the 
valley toward the town; once as a terror-stricken runa¬ 
way boy of eight years; next as a nineteen-year-old school¬ 
teacher, astir with the new ambition to become a doctor; 
then, two years later, a gawky young man, faring forth 
indecisively toward the States and the University of 
Michigan. And each time, this steep promontory with 
its Olympian perspective had curiously revivified his 
hope, hardened his resolution. The escarpment commem¬ 
orated the epochs of his career; from its bold crest he 
could survey the course of his life thus far, just as he 
surveyed the panoramic sweep of the earth beneath—yes, 
could dimly but surely seem to chart the years ahead. 

His gaze, becoming less preoccupied, mounted slowly 
from the narrow angular Conestoga River, choked with 
rain, overflowing at intervals, coursing obliquely south- 
westward across the valley; skimmed over the town, and 
came to rest upon the gradual compensating rise of the 
country beyond. The view was superb just now; the 
rain-washed air seemed liquidly magnifying. Between 
patches of pine forests he could scan the open clearances. 
Due north, directly in line with the village, arose a 
rounded hilltop, thrice as high as the cliff on which he 


20 


THE RED-BLOOD 


stood and perhaps five miles distant: Mount Judah, they 
called it; and something of its noble boldness always 
caught him. Farther east, he identified the gloomy leaf¬ 
less mass of a familiar sugar bush; then, against this 
somber background, a farmhouse, standing out whitely 
poignant in the residue of sunlight. 

Following the Conestoga back toward the town, his 
eye halted on an unfamiliar landmark—what appeared 
to be a new brick house, directly east and across the 
stream from the Cartwright mill. The grove of poplars 
in which it stood had long been one of the curiosities 
of the vicinity, but this square sorrel edifice, seemingly 
enormous, must have replaced the small log hut that 
had shrunk back among the trees since his earliest recol¬ 
lection. 

The new Gough house, undoubtedly. He recalled Doc¬ 
tor Milk’s impressed accents. And this glamorous new 
girl—he searched his memory for her name—Jenny 
Gough. With an unusually rapid association of ideas, he 
stared down at the fragile bit of handkerchief. “J. G.” 

“So that’s how it is!” he murmured. 

Walking in the cemetery with a man! No, not even 
walking. He grinned, a thought salaciously; yet already 
he was obscurely disappointed, thwarted—permeated with 
a sense of envious suspicion. Who was the man with her? 

But his darkened glance had drifted across the Cone¬ 
stoga to the mill and the adjacent distillery—her father 
owned them now—and thence to the low, unpainted frame 
structure, conveniently close to the distillery, the Queen’s 
Inn. The hotel faced the other way; but on either side 
he could detect black specks of rigs, immobilely awaiting 
their owners’ return from the barroom within. He had 
an instant’s visualization of that long narrow chamber 
of conviviality, crowded, doubtless, even at this time of 
day with farmers and town loafers pouring down raw 


THE GRAVEYARD 


21 


whisky; and again his mouth curved down at the corners. 
It would be strange, he avowed, if his father was not 
there, waiting to be dragged home. 

The sun had gone; and realizing his time was brief, 
he passed on to the rest of the town—over familiar 
houses: Doctor Milk’s, Reverend Cockburn’s, the On- 
wellers’; the general store, George Boole’s blacksmith 
shop, the ashery, the cooper shop, the stubby tower of 
the Methodist church, the log schoolhouse where he had 
earned the money for his medical course—until at last 
he came upon his own home, facing him from a slight 
eminence in the westerly part of the town, small, in¬ 
credibly bleak-looking with its unpainted, weather- 
smirched fagade. 

That was the trouble with the whole community: this 
forlorn, dismal, unpainted quality—everything rotting 
like the sawn boards of the houses—a frontier town with 
none of its first vigor left. He contrasted it unfavorably 
with the freshness of towns in the States; with Detroit, 
where he had clerked last summer; even with Ann Arbor. 

His chest expanded with the sense of his achievement. 

“Thank God, I had the grit to get away and have a 
look at the world!” 

Once more the limestone escarpment was beginning to 
imbue in him something of its own exalted perspective; 
he found himself taking hold of his life, rising temporarily 
from the weeds of everyday irritations and sloths that 
seemed most of the time to choke off his sense of vision; 
formulating broad, pleasurably stirring resolutions. 

“Shall I stay here or shall I go back and enlist?” he 
demanded of the earth beneath. Yet no revelation seemed 
vouchsafed to him. 

“I’ll decide this week,” he temporized. 

It was possible, he thought, the new railroad might 
transfuse fresh life into Cartwright. 


22 


THE RED-BLOOD 


A second urgency returned. He gripped his hands into 
stubborn fists. “And this week, whether I go or stay”— 
his keen, unimaginative, gray eyes grimly regarded the 
low Canadian hills opposite—“I’ll settle once and for 
all this bastardy business.” 

A slight relaxation from tension came upon him; he 
became aware of perspiration on his forehead, drew off his 
soggy cloth cap—revealing a short stiff pompadour of a 
diluted brown color—and wfiped away the moisture with 
his coat sleeve. It was growing warmer; the wind had 
fallen away to nothing. He caught himself tweaking his 
thick eyebrows—always, with him, the unconscious ges¬ 
ture of fatigue. 

His final glance at the town picked up a patch of 
dubious white, even farther west than his home. A can¬ 
vas tent, perhaps. He stared perplexed a moment, then 
nodded his head in identification, remembering the placard 
he had stripped from the fir tree. 

“Prof. Evanturel’s Mammoth Medical Exposition.” 

He mouthed the words ironically. 

But already it was darker; a first point of light from 
the Queen’s Inn punctured the twilight. Reluctantly he 
picked up his burdens again, and began descending along 
the brink of the escarpment into the increasingly humid 
air of the valley below. 


CHAPTER III 


HIS MOTHER 

I 

TNSTEAD of knocking at once, he chose to continue 
-*■ past the door and pause outside the window of the 
sitting room. A tallow dip burned dim on a low center 
table; but he could descry no one in the room. A brighter 
illumination, however, fell across the rag carpet from 
the usually deserted parlor, and now he could hear faint 
sounds of music. 

The parlor window, when he had descended the veranda 
and circled around to its sill, gave him little more recom¬ 
pense. A very young girl in a short dress of printed 
calico stood with her back to him, bending slightly down 
over the side of the reed organ. He could see a little 
of her right cheek and eyebrow—enough to tell him he did 
not know her—strongly illumined in the light from the 
lamp, which he realized must be in its accustomed place 
on top of the organ. She seemed to be regarding the 
keyboard fixedly; the idea came to him she was probably 
one of his mother’s music pupils, through whom she eked 
out the meager earnings from her dairy. He tried to 
peer over the girl’s shoulder for a glimpse of his mother. 

The sound of the organ continued, and he turned his 
head to catch it more distinctly. Just then the girl moved 
a little; and there in the narrow interstice was his mother’s 
face, the light beating down on it searchingly. For an 

23 


24 


THE RED-BLOOD 


instant he scarcely identified her, for her broad, rather 
bony face, usually so passive, so stolid, stood out, for 
the moment transfigured with a kind of contented, listen¬ 
ing rapture. She was looking, not at her music, but 
upward full into the light—yet unseeingly, as if wholly 
lost in the wonder and delight of her simple act of creation. 

The music now filtered into her son’s emotions—an 
ancient hymn he had heard her play a hundred times. 
The young girl still stood at his mother’s shoulder, and 
he noted her immature face likewise touched with feeling, 
her lips slightly moving with the words of the song; but 
he somehow resented her. 

Yet his own lips moved, too, with the familiar chorus: 

“In the sweet 
By and by 

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.” 

Standing outside the window, the dusk enfolding him, 
he vaguely sensed a peculiar disquiet in the music, a 
certain withholding of peace, a continuance of restlessness. 

“In the sweet—” 
the chorus went on— 

“By and by—” 

The chords had somehow instantly resolved into a 
delicious, poignant certitude of tranquillity. His throat 
tightened absurdly— 

“We shall meet on that beautiful shore.” 

The girl started in fear; she was straining wide-open 


HIS MOTHER 


25 


eyes through the window at him. He came closer, and 
met his mother's anxious scrutiny with a smile. 

11 

Presently they heard a hesitant voice: 

“I’ll be leaving now, Mrs. McNicol.” 

They both looked round. The young girl had thrown a 
cloak about her shoulders, and was diffidently closing 
the hymn book on the rack. 

“Oh!” His mother gestured half apologetically. “Well 
then—I’ll make up the time next lesson; Thursday— 
ay?” She had the habit, distinctively Canadian, of ending 
her sentence with this peculiar rising inflection. 

“Certainly,” acquiesced the girl sweetly, and moved 
into the sitting room toward the still open door. “On 
Thursday, then.” 

She was on the doorstep before Mrs. McNicol remem¬ 
bered her manners. 

“This is my son, Doctor”—she repeated the new title 
proudly—“Doctor McNicol. Miss Gough.” 

His eyes still refused credence after the girl had gone. 

“Miss Gough!” he faltered. 

His mother paid no attention to his perplexity. “Yes— 
Gough. They moved in a year ago—from Toronto.” She 
pronounced it To-rawn-to. “Her pa bought the mill from 
Ferguson.” 

His deflation was acutely painful. The glamorous Miss 
Gough, then, was a little girl—not more than fourteen 
years old. And that bit of frivolous handkerchief in his 
pocket—it was not hers, after all. 

“They’re rich, I hear,” his mother expatiated. Her 
tone was casual; never under any provocation would she 
have admitted knuckling down to anyone. He could 
detect, all the same, that she was mightily impressed. 




26 


THE RED-BLOOD 


He nodded. “So Doc Milk told me.” 

She took up that cue eagerly. “You’ve seen him al¬ 
ready?” 

“Met him coming over from Drayton.” 

He pulled himself together a little. What would his 
mother think, he wondered, if she realized he might not 
settle down in Cartwright, after all? 

She had a great deal to say on this score, it seemed. 
“And none too glad to see you, either, I’ll warrant. He’s 
been after your pa and me every day the past month, 
a-tellin’ us how loony you’d be to settle here. Poor old 
soul, he’s gettin’ thin with worry.” 

But whatever pity she felt was swallowed up in vast 
pride for her son. She had even less doubt than he of his 
easy superiority over the senile Cartwright physician. 
And in return, he now regarded her with an intense loyal 
affection—her eyes, like his, open and practical, but misty 
with emotion for the moment—her wide sound upper 
teeth, arching out slightly like his own, affecting a little 
the conformation of her mouth. Her nose was longer 
than his; he had, in fact, inherited his father’s short snub 
nose. 

Should he tell her of his indecision? 

“Milk offered me the same advice,” he said. 

She laughed a little. “People have been asking me 
for weeks when you were coming home. They’re sick and 
tired of Doctor Milk.” 

“I fancy I’ll be able to hold my own,” he hazarded, 
“if I decide to stay.” 

His mother took a step toward him. “If you stay!” 

“I’m thinking I may go back to Detroit and enlist, 
mother.” Characteristically, he had determined on blunt 
frankness. 

She was clearly incredulous. “Fight for the Yankees— 


HIS MOTHER 


27 

after what they did to the Trent! Insultin’ the British 
flag!” 

“Yes, mother.” He could smile tolerantly at her in¬ 
tense Canadian chauvinism. “Of course, I’ve not made 
up my mind yet—but the opportunities in the States are 
so much bigger than here.” 

She was severely wounded, both as a Canadian and as 
his mother. “It would be cannier, Denny, I’m thinkin’, 
to wait at least till the war is over, ay?” 

His answer was significantly practical. “No”—he 
shook his head decisively—“the war’s almost over now; 
there’s little risk in enlisting. And no man who hasn’t 
been in the war is going to have much chance of succeed¬ 
ing, anywhere in the States, for years to come.” He 
stopped. “Besides, there’s the bounty. I can get sixteen 
hundred dollars the minute I enlist.” 

Rebecca McNicol’s undemonstrative gray eyes— 
slightly strabismic, always patiently sad—admitted the 
potency of the argument. 

“ ’Twould be good practical experience for a doctor, 
happen.” She was thinking already for his good, not 
of her own loneliness. 

His acquiescence was deceitful, he realized; if he 
enlisted at all, it would be as a soldier. 

“There’s no haste about deciding,” he reassured her. 
“We’ve plenty of time to think what’s best. Meantime, 
how about some supper?” 


hi 

As if summoned by the magic word, the three younger 
children came bursting in through the kitchen—the boy, 
Glen, surveying the stove expectantly as he passed—then 
stopped short in an ecstasy of shyness. 



28 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Now then,” Mrs. McNicol cajoled, “don’t be tellin’ 
me you’ve forgot your own brother.” 

Naomi, the older girl, a contemporary of the dis¬ 
illusioning Miss Gough, was the first to recognize him. 

“It’s Wellington Dennison!” She rushed upon him. 

He was glad enough to see them; the family bond was 
strong in him; yet they had never captured his affection 
deeply. They were so much younger, for one thing—his 
mother had been childless for eight years after his own 
birth; they had never played together; they had no 
common enthusiasms. But more than this, they failed 
to interest him: they seemed so stolidly overfed; so 
thick-headed; so destitute of charm, of personality; so 
vague of outline. Three fat faces, patched with freckles. 
Some finer-textured, more sensitive person, surveying the 
family, would perhaps have thought them all dismayingly 
sluggish of soul; but Wellington Dennison felt himself a 
phoenix of nervous volatility, by comparison with those 
three juniors. 

His mother had left them together; and now there 
crept out stealthily from the kitchen a pungent, smoky 
aroma, which he seemed to smell more acutely with his 
throbbing stomach than with his nostrils. They found 
her stooping attentively over the chunk of pork fat sizzling 
on the griddle. 

“Oh, ma!” from Evva, the smaller girl. 

“Not hungry, any of you?” Mrs. McNicol feigned 
astonishment at the fierce outcry. “A pack of wolves— 
you too, Denny. You’re almost as bad as the rest.” 

The satisfaction of hunger was by common consent a 
subject for high humor. He thumped his empty stomach. 

“I’ll be wanting a straight thousand of them cakes, 
ma.” 

“Eat what’s set before you, and hold your peace,” she 
enjoined. 


HIS MOTHER 


29 

The water in a pot began to boil; and Mrs. McNicol, 
with a grand air, reached for a green caddy. 

“We’ll be having tea, too—ay?” 

This was simply stupendous. Their loud mirth died 
away, and they watched her in awe-stricken gravity as she 
poured the expensive delicacy into the pot. 

“Where’s pa?” 

Glen’s inquiry, natural enough, seemed to dispel the 
moment’s gayety instantly. Mrs. McNicol, lifting the 
first spoonful of batter from the crock in her arm, paused 
abruptly. 

“I’ll go fetch him,” she announced, with decisive mat¬ 
ter-of-factness, then handed the pancake batter to Naomi. 
“But keep an eye on them pork ribs, mind.” 



CHAPTER IV 

THE QUEEN'S INN 

I 

H E left the younger children avidly contemplating the 
first batch of pancakes, and caught up with his 
mother outside. 

“You go back,” he told her, with a show of authority. 
“I'll fetch pa.” 

She hesitated an instant. Even in the settling dark¬ 
ness he could note, through the outer wrap she had thrown 
about her—even through her dress of worn homemade 
wincey—the bony quality of her neck and shoulders, the 
flatness of her chest. 

She shook her head. “He’ll be payin’ more heed to 
me,” she decided, and hurried forward. 

He was nettled, as always, by her independence. 

“I don’t want you should be going into the inn, ma, 
before a lot of drunken sots, and begging him to come 
home.” 

“You don’t understand your pa, Wellington.” She 
never called him by his first name except in moments 
of anxiety. “You’d only fight with him.” 

“That I should!” he broke in, gruffly. “But it’s not 
your place-” 

“I’ve done it many times lately—he’s been much worse 
—and I might as well keep on doin’ it, now’t you’re 
goin’ back to the States again.” 

He felt suddenly penetrated with selfish guilt; yet there 
had surely been no accusing inflection in her voice. She 

30 




3i 


THE QUEEN’S INN 

spoke quite passively; evidently she regarded the foray 
upon the inn’s barroom not as a bit of high heroism, but 
in the light of an everyday sortilege of fate—of a piece 
with nursing the sick, the laying out of the dead. And 
yet these things had not blunted her; she was not coarse 
grained, like most of the women about; even in her un¬ 
questioning acceptance of life as she found it, he sensed 
the conquering of fine recoils. 

And this mother of his, who had given him life, who 
had struggled for him and with him, who had fought 
every easy self-satisfaction in him and prodded him out 
into the larger world, whose ill-paid music lessons, yes, 
whose long hours over the churn, even, had helped him 
through college—he was planning to desert her without 
a qualm. 

Not she, but his own sluggish conscience for her, seemed 
to be saying: “I have planned, I have toiled, I have 
suffered, to bring you to manhood; and now you leave 
me, forlorn, alone, almost spent—to keep on fetching 
your father out of the inn, unprotected.” 

He spoke impulsively, just before they reached the 
place. 

“Then I’ll not be going back to the States, ma; I’m 
staying here.” 

In the illumination from the hotel’s interior he could 
see her face again. It remained unaffected; her lips did 
not quiver, even slightly. She merely turned tow T ard him 
a little—yet he could feel her emanation of great relief. 

n 

She opened the door and entered the inn. 

“But, ma-” 

“I’ll wait here,” she answered his unspoken objection. 
“You can go see.” 




32 


THE RED-BLOOD 


The lobbv seemed deserted. At the sound of the 
closed door, however, a woman emerged from a passage¬ 
way just beyond the desk. Her slattern’s eyes were dull 
and hopeless. 

“He ain’t here,” she observed briefly to Mrs. McNicol, 
and disappeared again without recognizing Wellington 
Dennison. 

From the screened door to the left issued the sounds 
of clinking glasses, scuffling feet, and raw drunken voices. 

He led his mother to the farther end of the lobby, 
where there were a few stiff chairs. 

“I’d best take a look, nevertheless,” he said. 

At this end of the room stood an immense wood stove, 
and as Mrs. McNicol moved around it toward a chair 
in the corner they both paused abruptly. Behind the 
stove sat a young man, evidently a farmer, with the red 
face typical of the district. On his lap was a girl. 

The two looked up, somewhat startled, but did not 
move. An expression of extreme silliness came over their 
faces. The man’s great slack mouth twisted into a defiant 
grin; the girl seemed slightly disconcerted, but un¬ 
ashamed. 

Both Mrs. McNicol and her son stood staring a mo¬ 
ment. This was an unusual spectacle, even for the Queen’s 
Inn. Drunken men were common enough, but the women 
were ordinarily shut off from such convivialities. This 
girl, whose only charm was youth, who a few years hence 
would be a shapeless kitchen drudge, had refused to abide 
by the conventions; her pitifully brazen smile and the 
two emptv glasses on the window sill established that. 
The man’s large, stubby hands gripped her shoulder more 
tightlv. nulled her down upon him a little closer. 

“Oh!” 

Rebecca McNicol’s scarcely audible gasp preceded her 
quick withdrawal from the stove. Her son followed her 


33 


THE QUEEN’S INN 

until they had reached the desk once more. He did not 
know either of the intrigants, but he caught himself 
slightly envying the young farmer, savoring the lure of 
seduction. The girl was nothing at all, poorly dressed, 
with ill-fitting muddy shoes sticking out ungracefully; 
she had no faintest claim to charm or distinction, like 
that other dimly seen girl in the cemetery—and yet, her 
young slimness, the look of reckless expectancy in her 
eyes! 

He left his mother at the desk and strode past the 
screen into the barroom. 

Later on in the evening this musty, slightly rancid 
room, occupying the entire wing of the Queen’s Inn, 
would be thickly populated with the men of Cartwright; 
just now, however, its life was at low tide. A half dozen 
loiterers, mostly peasants, “chaw-bacons,” from the sur¬ 
rounding farms, sprawled about obscenely, many of their 
dull, unkempt faces blackened with the scorch of burning 
log heaps. And once more McNicol had his feeling of 
physical disgust. This barbarous whisky-soaking, with 
no brightness of humor, no sparkle of gayety, to redeem 
it, revolted him. It was so sodden, so swinish; worst 
of all, to him at least, it was so unthrifty: these boors, 
because they swilled whisky, were not worth a straw as 
farmers. 

They veered toward him stupidly, and he saw at once 
his father was not there. 

Ben Beatty, the inn’s round-jowled owner, standing 
behind the long bar in his linsey-woolsey shirt sleeves, 
was the only one sober enough to recognize the intruder. 

“Hel-fo, Denny McNicol!” The sense of his duties 
as host prompted a formal introduction. “Boys, here’s 
our new doctor—and a damn’ sight better n the old one. 
Every one drinks on me!” 


34 


THE RED-BLOOD 


The newcomer was in no mood to mix with these 
sweaty cattle, even at the risk of professional unpopu¬ 
larity. His sharp voice cut through the bellow of in¬ 
ebriated enthusiasm. 

“No, thanks, Ben—not now. My father been in?” 

Beatty shook his head sullenly; his sense of fitness was 
offended. Besotted eyeballs rolled resentfully. The bar¬ 
room was silent an instant with astonishment at the un¬ 
precedented slight; but as the intruder turned shortly, a 
low grumbling seemed to waft him out into the hallway. 

“Go to the devil,” he thought he heard a voice call 
after him. 

His mother still waited immobile by the side of the 
desk; but now her habitual matter-of-factness had de¬ 
parted; she seemed wrapped in some subtle impenetrable 
grief. 

He shook his head. “Not there.” 

Her features did not lighten, as he had expected; ner 
alert apprehension rested somewhere else. He stood 
puzzled. Never had he seen this expression of acute and 
devastating pain on her capable, homely, raw-boned face. 

“What’s the matter?” he faltered, awkwardly. 

From beyond the stove at the end of the barren, car¬ 
petless lobby came a hoarse laugh, then a girl’s inept 
giggling. He reverted quickly to those shameless lovers; 
at the recollection of the girl’s eyes, full of the promise 
of abandon, his mind took on the hue of keen covetous¬ 
ness. 

But the vivid hue faded suddenly into an ashy gray 
and he discovered himself filled with a caustic sorrow, an 
aching compassion, for the sordid human tragedy that 
seemed crying out to him from behind the stove. All 
this—a sniggering guffaw burst from the barroom—and 
a sickening shame for himself and all men. 


THE QUEEN’S INN 35 

For he had seen an unprecedented thing—a tear, faintly 
reminiscent, rolling down his mother’s gaunt cheek. 

hi 

His father’s tears, on the contrary, were far too facile 
to be impressive. He was awaiting their return in the 
kitchen; when he caught sight of his son he wept copi¬ 
ously, insisted on kissing him, made a much greater stir 
than had his wife. If outward demonstration counted for 
anything, he loved Wellington Dennison ten times as 
much as she. It was annoying, almost disgusting; only 
an unwilling filial restraint, underlying the younger man’s 
contempt, kept him from brushing his father off, curtly 
bidding him to stop his snivel. 

“My boy! my boy!” sobbed Guy McNicol noisily. 
Wellington was conscious of a current of surprise that 
his father’s moist exhalations were guiltless of alcohol. 

The younger children ranged around the spectacle, 
faintly interested, but already restive that supper was 
being delayed. Rebecca McNicol, long since unaffected 
by her husband’s easy emotions, was pouring out the 
boiled tea. 

“Supper’s ready,” she cut in. Her own solitary tear, 
back there in the Queen’s Inn, she seemed to have wholly 
forgotten. 

But her spouse’s sensibilities had not yet had their 
fling; he veered from paternal affection to personal griev¬ 
ance. 

“And you were thinkin’ I was at the inn,” he accused 
her. 

Mrs. McNicol surveyed his fresh weeping with a prac¬ 
tical eye. “Well, why shouldn’t I be thinkin’ so?” 

It was clear he conceived himself treacherously 
wronged. “And only this mornin’ I was tellin’ you I’d 


36 THE RED-BLOOD 

never go there again.” He wagged his unkempt head 
dolefully. 

Wellington Dennison viewed his weakling father with 
a renewal of cold appraising disgust. This shambling 
man, who could shed tears so fluently over his son, would 
never think, had never thought, of performing one solid 
toilsome service for him. No, he w T ept, and let his wife 
do the drudgery, the farm work, all the actual everyday 
toil and even all the planning, that the family might be 
kept together, that the children might somehow be given 
a chance in life. Yes, his father w T as entirely worthless; 
he was improvident; he spent every tuppence he could 
lay lazy hands on, in strong drink. But was he a hypo¬ 
crite, in the bargain? His son thought so, but could not 
be sure; perhaps these easy surface emotions were gen¬ 
uine enough in their way. 

One thing was certain: he could never tolerate accusa¬ 
tions against his mother. She did not weep over him, but 
she it was who had scrimped and saved and drudged, 
that one day he might be somebody. And even as he had 
always hated fiercely and contemptuously that maudlin- 
ism, that slothfulness, of his father, so had he, from his 
boyhood’s earliest recollection, linked himself with her 
affectionately, sprung instinctively to her defense. 

Thus he now darkened. “You’ve promised her before 
to keep out of the bar. Why should she put any faith 
in what you say?” 

McNicol, senior, had a fierce, flamelike temper on oc¬ 
casion; for the twinkling of an eye he flickered between 
wrath and fresh tears. 

Wellington’s mother stirred uneasily. “Where were 
you, Guy?” she diverted him. Always she sought to in¬ 
tervene between their clashes. 

This time she was successful. Her husband’s eyes, an 
irresolute skeptical blue, suddenly irradiated the fervor 


37 


THE QUEEN’S INN 

of new high resolves. Mother and son were not deceived: 
it was a familiar look; he was forever coming home in a 
fine frenzy over some wild, worthless scheme. He sucked 
all the thrill out of his virtuous intentions—then never 
did anything. 

“I was waitin’ in the tent yonder to see the professor— 
EvanturePs his name,” he began, quickly. “You’ve not 
heard him yet, Denny. A wonderful man—a marvelous 
healer.” 

“A wonderful faker, I’ll be bound.” 

His father ran on, without noticing the irreverence. 
“The show opened last night. Everybody’s daft about 
him. He’s cured a dozen people already. Tapeworms, 
rheumatism—” His enthusiastic eyes stopped short on 
the tea in his son’s cup. “Rebecca!” he called, sharply. 
“Where’s my tea?” 

Mrs. McNicol said gently: 

“Tea! You don’t take tea—it upsets you. You know 
that.” 

Wellington Dennison remembered with professional in¬ 
terest his father’s weak stomach. McNicol, senior, drank 
hot water; and on his plate was the customary dish of 
junket. 

“Upsets me!” He threw the water contemptuously on 
the floor. “I’m wantin’ tea, I tell you—and tea I’m 
goin’ to have!” 

She took the cup and looked questioningly at her son. 

“Doctor Milk said-” 

“Doctor Milk be damned!” Guy McNicol was on the 
verge of one of his fits of passion; he pounded on the bare 
table with the bone handle of his knife. The younger 
children stared in fright. 

His son yawned wearily. “Oh, let him have it, ma.” 
Of what use was any diet to a stomach constantly pickled 
with cheap whisky? 



THE RED-BLOOD 


38 

“Of course I can have it—and pancakes too!” He 
jabbed a fork into the pile of steaming wheat cakes in the 
center of the table. “The professor said I could eat 
anything—if I used one of his electric belts. Cured 
Maggie Sutherland overnight. Yes, sir, heem a great 
feller.” 

He poured a sip of the caustic tea into his mouthful 
of pancakes and glared at them all defiantly. Rebecca 
McNicoks calloused hands dropped resignedly into her 
lap. The new physician was wholly indifferent. If his 
father wanted to kill himself off, so much the better. 

He queried, “And for what did you want to see this 
Evanturel—to buy an electric belt?” 

The other gulped down enough of the contraband food 
to vouchsafe explanation. “I was wantin’ to see him on 
business—that’s for what. I must wait till he came back. 
Was walkin’ out all afternoon.” 

Dr. McNicol scowled again. “Well, go on.” 

“This town’s no place for a man like me,” quavered 
Guy McNicol between mouthfuls. “What chance is there 
here? Cartwright never ’ll be any bigger—and now I 
hear the councilors are thinkin’ of refusin’ to pay the 
Grand Trunk its bonus. Goin’ to throw away the town’s 
one chance to grow. Railroad ’ll never come through here 
without a bonus.” Once more he hammered the table. 
“No, sir, no place for me. I’ve been wantin’ to get out— 
travel—see the world; and now I’m a-goin’—with this 
Professor Evanturel’s show.” 

There were mild exclamations of surprise, but no 
amazement, no grief. They all knew he would never stir 
from the town. 

“Yes, siree!” the head of the family swept on, un¬ 
dampened. “Goin’ to Allandale next week, then Moore- 
field—and right through to Toronto.” 


THE QUEEN’S INN 39 

Glen, the boy, began to discern the romantic aspects 
of life with a tent show. 

“Say, pa, what you goin’ to do? Play the bagpipes?” 

His frayed-out parent tried hard to keep up the illusion. 
“Not at first, sonny. Later on, the professor says, I’ll be 
one of the minstrels, but right now, startin’ to-night or 
to-morrow, he’s goin’ to use me to demonstrate his medi¬ 
cines.” This did not appear to have had its effect, so 
he added: “Expert medical treatment free of charge. I 
can eat anything I want from now on.” 

Wellington Dennison, in the very midst of his scornful 
distaste for the futile person he called his father, had an 
odd sense of disassociation. He felt himself so anaesthetic 
to this already old man of forty-three; so alien, indeed, 
from these three dull-witted children. He was his moth¬ 
er’s son, unmistakably; their physical resemblance was 
apparent, even if he had not felt the bond of the blood 
she had given him. But between his father and himself 
he could detect no similarity, even of feature. Their noses, 
true, might be called alike: they both turned up at the 
end; but his own was certainly longer, more forceful. 
The whole facial scheme was so diverse. The accent was 
all upon his father’s forehead—high, under his untrimmed 
gray hair with its slight wave, and almost distinguished; 
but from the brows down his face fell away to nothing: 
his eyes were uncertain, unsteady, except for their in¬ 
frequent flashes of anger; his mouth and chin lagged in¬ 
credibly behind the rest of his countenance. His son’s 
features, on the contrary, reached their crest in the 
promontory of his chin; one felt that his pertinacity, 
his capacity for endurance, more than compensated for 
any lack in him of quick perceptives, of intuitive insight. 

“I was wonderin’, Beck,” McNicol, senior, was saying, 
“would you shave me and trim me up a bit for the show 
to-night?” 


40 


THE RED-BLOOD 


The words did not actually get to the younger man’s 
consciousness, for he had of a sudden been transfixed by 
a convulsing sense of revelation—an uncanny revelation 
that helped explain that disturbing mystery of his early 
years, that ugly word of Aleck Grizard’s. He had sensed 
a disgraceful something in that mystery, yet he could 
never see the thing clearly. The marriage of Guy and 
Rebecca McNicol was a matter of record. 

But now, for the moment, he had an instinctive cer¬ 
tainty he could not be the son of Guy McNicol. 


CHAPTER V 


HE HAS A PATIENT 

I 

A SHARP knocking on the front door aroused him 
^ from his abstraction. 

“Naomi, you go,” said his mother. 

He heard the door unlatched, saw his parents at the 
other end of the table lean sideways in their chairs and 
peer out into the sitting room. 

“Denny here?” 

Naomi reappeared in the kitchen. “It’s Mr. Grizard.” 

“Aleck Grizard?” Guy McNicoks inflection mirrored 
the unusualness of the event. Pie leaned toward the sit¬ 
ting-room door again. “Come right in, Aleck.” 

“No, by God!” Wellington Dennison’s first amazement 
at the intruder’s brazenness had given ground rapidly to a 
recurrence of his stinging rancor. His action, character¬ 
istically, was swift, instinctive. He found himself con¬ 
fronting his enemy in the sitting room, swung open the 
front door. 

“Get out!” he fairly shouted. 

Aleck Grizard, to his credit, was no coward; he stood 
his ground stolidly, but a little uncertainly. 

The muscles of McNicol’s upper arms and shoulders 
twitched covetously: but when he took his quick spring 
forward he found his mother already in the way, facing 
him. 

She threw a glance at Grizard. “What is it—Suny?” 

The matted red beard nodded. The man seemed dazed, 
unaccustomedly flaccid. 


41 


42 THE RED-BLOOD 

McNicol was exasperated by his mother’s calm inter¬ 
vention. 

“I won’t have him in this house, I tell you.” He tried 
to outflank her. 

She held up her hand, gently restraining. “I’ll talk to 
him outside.” 

He paced up and down impotently, at intervals glaring 
at the door that had closed behind them. He v/anted to 
pounce out upon Grizard, bear him to the ground. His 
mother ought not to be out there talking to him—the man 
who had been slandering both of them. 

The children moved about furtively, young Evva whim¬ 
pering with fear. Then his father—his putative father— 
came up to him full of grievance. 

“I must get shaved,” he whined. “For the show to¬ 
night.” He carried a mug and a razor in his trembling 
hands. “You used to shave me pretty fair yourself, 
Denny.” 

He had an impulse to push that rheumy face violently 
backward. Begging to be shaved—at a crisis like this! 

“You’ll grow a beard to the ground, for all of me!” 
he shot out contemptuously. 

His mother was back in the room, and he heard 
Grizard’s rig starting up. 

“I’ll talk to Wellington alone.” She led him through 
the kitchen toward his own bedroom. 

Her husband’s lamenting accents arose. “I’m wantin’ 
you to shave me, Beck.” 

“In a minute.” She closed the bedroom door softly on 
his plaints. 

Mrs. Grizard, she said, was near death with her unborn 
baby. Her labor had begun early in the morning. An 
old midwife was summoned forthwith. Toward afternoon 
they had all begun to grow frightened. Suny Grizard, 
in her agony, besought her husband to fetch Denny 



HE HAS A PATIENT 


43 


McNicol; she had no faith in Doctor Milk. That old 
botcher had been able to do nothing for her since his 
arrival at the cabin. By now she was very weak—perhaps 
she was already dead—and her baby undelivered. Would 
Doctor McNicol please come? 

No, he wouldn’t! Wellington Dennison threw back his 
shoulders. “First of all, it’s against professional ethics, 
mother. There’s another doctor already on the case.” 

“But Doctor Milk wants you to come, himself.” Re¬ 
becca McNicol gestured, a thought impatiently. 

“Then I’ll tell you what I told Grizard on the Drayton 
road this afternoon: before I’d budge, he and his’n 
could burn in hell! D’you think I’d lift a hand to help 
that rat? D’you think I’ve forgotten?” 

His mother’s eyes held his. “It’s Suny who’s dying, 
not Aleck.” 

“And then—listen—he called me bastard.” His voice 
choked with passion. 

A whim of pain passed across her face. “Wellington, 
I want you to go. Suny tried to be good to you—you’ve 
not forgotten? And she did me a great service once. 
Some day you’ll know what it was. You’ll always regret 
it if you don’t go.” 

Strange, inexplicable, the hold she had on him when 
she chose. In crises, she was always the stronger. 

He said, sulkily, “I thought he drove away.” 

“To get a fresh horse.” She smiled faintly up at him— 
a smile challenged by the wistful sadness of her eyes. 
“He’s a-comin’ back now, I fancy.” 

n 

Grizard, without a word, handed him the reins, while 
he himself dismounted clumsily and swung open the 
gate. McNicol had rebuffed the other’s first servile over- 




44 


THE RED-BLOOD 

tures of conversation; after the first mile they had ridden 
on in an aura of dense hostile silence. 

The horse, borrowed from George Boole, the black¬ 
smith, proceeded cautiously, reluctantly, down the nar¬ 
row unfamiliar corduroy road into the gloom of the forest 
that seemed to encroach ever more impassably about 
them. McNicol had himself forgotten the menacing wild¬ 
ness of the place, the road’s perverse jeopardies. The 
buckboard reflected each jolt to his spine; he put his 
medicine case on the floor between his feet, and grasped 
the edge of the seat with both hands. The horse stumbled, 
recovered itself miraculously. Grizard began cursing the 
animal with obscene, revolting oaths. 

“Shut up!” McNicol broke out, harshly. 

The right front wheel of the buckboard descended 
stiffly upon a cobblestone in a mud-hole between two 
logs, slid insecurely down the stone’s slanting surface, 
and sank deep into the mud. McNicol heard another 
oath, then the thud of a body striking the ground. 

But now Grizard’s wild imprecations aroused in him 
only a grim humor. The whole expedition, in fact, had 
its profoundly ironic overtones: it was comical enough 
that this archenemy of his should be pitched out on his 
head; but how infinitely more sardonic that they two 
should be jolting side by side along this corduroy road, 
linked by the insidious assault of the impenetrable night 
and this smothering malignant forest into an involuntary 
defensive bond. There was, too, a drop of satisfaction 
in his cup, that this sinister foe, who had meant to crush 
him into the mire, to stamp out all hope in him and all 
ambition, should now be bending the knee to him, suppli¬ 
cating him as indispensable. The wonder of fifteen years! 
Then he was a little boy, forlorn but somehow uncon¬ 
querable, seemingly cut off from the young sweet beck¬ 
oning of life—and now, incredibly, he was a man, strong 



HE HAS A PATIENT 


45 


already, but sentient of the possibilities of enormously 
greater power—a professional man, a doctor! The mir¬ 
acle seemed all at once stupendous. He thrilled. 

He could save human life. Even negligible human life 
■—like Suny Grizard’s, imploring him pitifully, from the 
log cabin ahead, for the privilege of dreary battered 
continuance. How much better for her to die—yet she 
had sent for him, pathetically human, as if to live meant 
ineffable bliss. 

“I owe her this much, happen,” he told himself. 

She would have helped him, it was true, if she had 
dared. Her mute tears he remembered, as he lay sobbing 
on the ground back of the cabin after that last rendezvous 
with the poker end. Her arm had been in a sling. The 
whole picture came clearly back to him, and he smiled 
a little: she, with her husband, had been caught in the 
Adventist craze; the universe was to be abruptly burned 
to cinders one night; Suny Grizard had sewed a pair of 
wings to her shoulders and earnestly endeavored to soar 
straight to heaven from the roof of the cabin. 

And now, quite irrelevantly, he had a vivid personal 
desire to save this mean little life of hers. His new ob¬ 
session returned puissantly to him: he must somehow, 
somewhere, at all costs, seek out and take hold of the 
truth of his parentage; till then he could know no tran¬ 
quillity. To some degree, he was certain, the story was 
interwoven with that brief and tragic interval in this 
selfsame cabin. And whence else could he wrest the 
facts; her husband or his own father he would not go 
to; he could not, to his mother. But this wretched 
woman, feebly craving the prerogative of life, knew. And 
she was, for the moment, literally at his mercy. 

A yellow light shone intermittently between massive 
tree trunks; the buckboard bumped slowly across the 
intervening road. 



46 THE RED-BLOOD 

As he pushed open the cabin’s heavy door he was 
taking his oath: 

“By God! I’ll have it out of her, I will.” 

But he heard an infant’s spasmodic wailing—aggrieved 
clearly, at having been born alive into a vile world. And 
old Milk wheeled toward him with obvious relieved 
exultation. 

“Had your trip for nothing, Denny,” he wheezed. 

McNicol resented the triumphant announcement—and 
he was disappointed, too. 

“Grizard said you were wanting me to come,” he 
responded shortly, and stared at the dumpy untidy 
midwife holding the blanket-swathed baby near the open 
hearth. 

The old man tilted his head toward the bed in the 
corner of the room. “She asked for you”—as if there 
were no accounting for such folly—“and I thought no 
harm. Plenty able to handle the case alone, I was.” 

A sudden access of moaning from the bed drew McNicol 
to the corner. Suny Grizard lay unconscious under a 
squalid and frayed piece-quilt. An unlovely object— 
her graying hair disheveled, her freckled lanky face 
perspiring and still racked with pain, eyelids and the 
underlying pouches both unpleasantly reddish. 

He would not be denied the dignity of a consultant, 
anyway; lifting the quilt a little, he drew out her inert 
sinewy arm and took her pulse. 

“Very low\” 

Doctor Milk parried this impertinence with a comical, 
infinitely condescending shrug of the shoulders, as if 
saying scornfully: “Now, what would you, boy, after 
fourteen hours?” 

But McNicol with sudden decision threw off the cover¬ 
ing. He started back, for an instant petrified. 

The ancient Milk peered down through dingy spec- 


HE HAS A PATIENT 


47 


tacles. “Say, now—hemorrhage, looks like, don’t it?” 

McNicol’s paralysis vanished in a flash of contempt. 
“What are you for doing? Your case, you know.” 

The pantaloon chewed gravely on that. “Nothing 
y’ can do.” His fingers raked that patriarchal, noxious 
fringe of whiskers. “She’ll be gone in no time.” 

They heard a cry of grief, almost snarling. Aleck 
Grizard had come in. He dropped to his knees in front 
of, not Amos Milk, but the boy he had beaten with the 
poker end. 

“For God’s sake, Doc, don’t let her die!” 

McNicol, with a short exclamation, jerked the bed out 
from the wall, leaped into the breach—instinctively he 
wanted to work from the left—and roughly pulled the 
body toward him. Even then he had no clear idea of 
what he was going to do. Some deep necessity for action 
—anything—drove him blindly. He had not been affected 
in the least by Aleck Grizard’s frantic invocation. Per¬ 
haps his resentment at Milk helped urge him on. 

Now, however, he had a miraculous inkling. His 
hands worked quickly, instinctively, powerfully, but he 
was hardly conscious of what they did. In his brain 
welled up an astonishingly vivid picture of a certain 
classroom in the medical building at the university—he 
even caught the smell of the building—then the lecturer, 
slightly quizzical, his mouth twisting a little with skeptical 
humor. And McNicol, toiling with extreme physical effort 
over the sluggish body on the bed, seemed miles away; 
as if he were back there in the lecture room, he could hear 
the professor drawl out: 

“And if you get a post-partem hemorrhage—why, God 
help you! Only one thing to do—a brutal thing. You 
shove your fist up and—” 

By Heaven! he was an apt pupil! 

The vision faded out. 




48 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“The ergot—quick!—in my bag!” 

Poor old Milk, in that impressive frock coat of his, 
hung pop-eyed over the bed, his talons twitching, half in 
protest, half in futility. 

“Jesus!” shouted McNicol. “Keep those slimy paws 
out of here! The ergot, damn it!” 

The dotard couldn’t move; it was the fumbling mid¬ 
wife who finally brought the contractive drug. 

“There!” said McNicol presently, not without the 
satisfaction of a difficult job well done. He was dimly 
surprised to find his face wet with perspiration. 


hi 

Yes, he had accomplished something. He was a suc¬ 
cess, a made man. In the first decisive clash with his 
rival, he had won, and won impressively. 

“You’ll be cornin’ t’ see her in the morning?” Aleck 
Grizard had besought him, quite ignoring old Milk. And 
he, equally oblivious, had nodded surlily. His bitter 
enemy pressed whisky on him, even a huge block of 
maple sugar, in offensive maudlin gratitude; then, with 
a superb emotional outburst: 

“Well—send in your bill, Doc.” 

The issue had been clear; its stakes, the medical su¬ 
premacy of Cartwright; and everyone in the room knew 
the outcome. Within twenty-four hours the whole village 
would have heard. 

The alarming truth must seemingly have filtered 
through even the ancient Milk’s opaque brain, but Mc¬ 
Nicol could not be certain. 

“Just what I was going to do,” came the gasping, 
straining voice of his former preceptor, as they rode 
townward. “Too quick for me, Denny.” 

Remembering the patriarch’s doddering helplessness of 


HE HAS A PATIENT 


49 


an hour ago, McNicol could have snorted. But why not 
play with such incredible conceit? He spoke gravely, 
modestly: 

“I’m pleased if you approve of my treatment, Doctor.” 

Amos Milk’s reassurance became tainted with his 
former superciliousness. 

“Oh, it’s well enough, I dessay. Of course, she won’t 
live, anyhow.” 

The conqueror, in the darkness, could grin as much 
as he chose. “Oh, won’t she?” he derided, to himself. 
“We’ll find out about that, my hearty.” But audibly 
he ventured: 

“You think not?” 

“Never had one live, in all my practice.” 

Had the old boy heard his snicker? He must be more 
careful. “I’ll just wager you never did, Amos,” he 
thought. 

A half mile of silence, and Doctor Milk, with sudden 
irrelevance, announced: 

“No, sir, there’s no room for you here in Cartwright, 
Denny. I feel kindly toward you, understand. That’s 
why I don’t want y’ to be making a bad mistake.” 

He was really scared to death, after all. 

“Pshaw! Lots of room,” McNicol answered. “Cart¬ 
wright’s going to be a big town—especially with the 
railroad-” 

Dr. Milk’s interruption was pitifully eager. “But the 
railroad’s not a-coming, Denny. I’m one of the coun¬ 
cilors. We’ll never pay that bonus. Why should we 
be wantin’ those devil-wagons through our town?” 

And McNicol did not bother to answer. How futile 
to waste breath on a fool who couldn’t perceive what rail¬ 
roads meant. And why, he thought, waste his young 
magnificent energies on a town that wanted to stay 
backwoods? 




50 


THE RED-BLOOD 


The waning moon came tardily over tree tops and cast 
its unnatural light over the desolate road ahead. He 
would be glad to get home; his feet were still wet and he 
was suddenly tired. On the steady night wind, through 
a clearing, swelled weirdly the howling of wolves a mile 
or two away. 

“Reminds me of Russia,” he heard Milk saying. “Only 
there they come right at you. Kill people, they do. 
Sometimes the women folks in Siberia have been known 
to throw their children out of the sleigh in order to-” 

McNicol did not listen. The idiot was forever prating 
of his youthful travels; some of his yarns the younger 
man had had to listen to a hundred times, it seemed. 

“And it’s wolves you’ll be having here for years and 
years,” McNicol arraigned silently. “Just because you 
won’t pay a railroad bonus.” 

He thought covetously of the States—their energy, 
their luring opportunity, their up-and-coming quality. 
Still, his odd satisfaction with himself persisted unac¬ 
countably. The memory of his swift skill, his emergency 
effectiveness with Suny Grizard, slowly warmed through 
him once more. He had done something, he had vindi¬ 
cated himself, he had shown himself powerful. He had 
achieved. If that sort of melodrama was what a doctor 
lived, perhaps, after all, he wanted to be a doctor. 

“And by the Lord Harry,” he muttered, “she’s not 
going to die, either.” Then with an afterthought, “At 
least not till I’ve had out of her what she knows of me.” 

His reversion to bitterness seemed to find echo in the 
plaintive yodling call of a near-by loon. 

To Milk, though, the sound suggested pleasanter fan¬ 
cies. 

“Happen the fishing’s getting about ripe on the lake,” 
his noduled vocal cords wheezed. “Ay, Doctor?” 



HE HAS A PATIENT 


5i 


Doctor! 

It was a tribute, the professional accolade—the admis¬ 
sion into medical confrerie. 

McNicol could not but smile; he was surer than ever 
now that the ancient Milk was thoroughly frightened. 


CHAPTER VI 


IN THE TENT 


I 


HE thoroughly detestable Grizard sounded his 



A praises so vigorously at the Queen’s Inn barroom 
next day that before evening he had three new patients 
in Cartwright. 

“You’ll be having to pick up a rig somewheres,” said 
his mother. She was vastly proud and happy over his 
success, and she almost permitted herself to show it. 

It was a consideration he had already given thought 
to. Obviously he must have a horse as soon as he had 
built up a practice in the surrounding country. Aleck 
Grizard had had to drive him in the buckboard that 
noon, both to and from his still alive but inarticulate 
wife. But this was hardly a precedent; most farmers, 
rather than do this, would go to Doctor Milk instead. 

He smiled a little, recalling one of the countryside 
sayings: 


Oh, the rich may ride in chaises, 
But the poor, b’ Jasus, 

Must walk. 


“And there’s professional dignity to be thought of,” 
he reflected, more seriously, as he left the abode of his 
fourth and latest patient—a baby with convulsions, from 
green apples—and began trudging home to a belated 


IN THE TENT 


53 


supper. Many people would refuse to believe him a 
doctor till he owned a horse and buggy. “But damned 
if I ever wear a coat and hat like Milk’s!” 

The poor old duffer! He wondered if his rival had 
heard of these latest rapid signs of the inevitable. Prob¬ 
ably not. And even if he had, he would by now have 
thought of enough explanations to bolster up his vanity. 

“Well, the race is always to the swift—and the young,” 
McNicol half justified himself. “No room for the stupid 
bungler anywhere.” Old Milk had been decent enough 
to him, of course. He’d hate to see him starve—in fact, 
he wouldn’t let that happen. When he had clearly demon¬ 
strated his superiority, when he had taken the old man’s 
practice away from him, perhaps he’d give him some job 
or other in his office. 

It gave him a definite shock, arriving home in this 
nimbus of magnanimity, to discover his ancient competitor 
in the act of leaving the house. 

“Just been in to have a look at your father, Denny.” 

“You mean-” 

“Ay, he’s a bit sick—nothing serious. Sent for me right 
away.” 

McNicol decided, then and there, the old man could 
starve, for all of him. That posture of benign superiority 
as he drove away! The whole town would know of it at 
once: the new doctor’s own family couldn’t trust him, 
must send for an older, wiser practitioner, even for a 
minor illness. 

McNicol, senior, lay on a sofa in the living room, his 
wife near by. 

“What’s all this—having in another doctor? Give 
folks a fine idea of me, won’t it?” 

“Your pa’s stomach’s been bothering him again,” said 
Rebecca McNicol, defensively. “Something he swallowed 
at the tent last night—or maybe them pancakes or that 



THE RED-BLOOD 


54 

tea. You weren’t home—and he thinks Doctor Milk’s 
medicine helps him.” 

“Humbug!” scoffed Wellington Dennison, righteously 
wrathful. 

His father sat up, to belie the calumny. “Humbug 
nothing! Feel better already. Must be getting ready 
for the performance.” 

Rebecca McNicol’s protest was apprehensive. “You’re 
not going again to-night?” 

The master of the house stood up unsteadily, and 
moved toward his felt hat. 

“A matter of honor,” he announced grandly. “I 
promised the professor I’d come, and I never break a 
promise. He needs me in the show.” 

“But you’ll be bad off to-morrow.” 

The martyr to duty paused at the door, slightly 
ruffled by the implication he was not completely able to 
look after himself. 

“I won’t either, Beck. Yes, I’m going to keep my 
word and go, but he’s got to use me for something else. 
My stomach’s too weak—not for a hundred dollars, not 
for a hundred shows, is Guy McNicol going to drink any 
more of that tapeworm medicine!” 

n 

A shade reluctantly, he rewrapped the photograph 
album. It was a beguiling and gaudy affair of thick 
maroon morocco and profuse gilt; obliquely up the front 
cover ran a silver plate, resolving into the script, “Album.” 
A bit of extravagance, he reflected. He had seen it in a 
Detroit show window, and had been quite unable to resist 
purchasing it. But fifteen dollars! Already the Cart¬ 
wright scale of values had repossessed him. Hadn’t he 
better keep it himself, or at least give it to his mother 


IN THE TENT 


55 


and thus retain it in the family? It cost him a very 
genuine pang to decide to go through with his first plan. 

“I’m going out for a time, ma.” 

“Oh?” She appeared faintly disappointed. “Well 
now, I was thinkin’ we might go to the tent together.” 

It amazed him. “What—me go listen to a medical 
faker? I’d look pretty—a regular doctor—encouraging 
a fraud like that. The fellow ought to be run out of 
town! ” 

His mother looked apologetic. “It’s the music I go 
to hear.” He observed she was wearing her best bonnet 
and, in place of the usual worn dress of homemade flannel, 
her black Orleans. 

“Music!” he sniffed. “Must be grand music that 
show’d be having.” 

They stood facing each other an instant, before she 
said: 

“Listen! What’s that?” 

He too caught scarcely audible strains, opened the door 
and preceded her out upon the porch. 

Down the street, perhaps in front of the Queen’s Inn, 
he discerned moving lights, flitting figures. 

“It’d be the parade startin’,” said his mother. 

Yes, the lights were coming closer, along the road’s 
slight upgrade. But McNicol’s lethargic excitement 
seemed rather engaged with the wild, whining music; some 
obscure spring of emotion was tunneling its way to outlet. 
He could see the procession distinctly in a moment: two 
black-faced minstrel men in front, performing a lively 
double-shuffle step; behind them, incongruously, two other 
men in Highland costume—the one straining at his bag¬ 
pipe, the other buffeting a big brass drum. Then, at 
the rear, in a brightly painted carriage, a pale melan¬ 
choly Hamlet in silk hat and frock coat, gazing sadly, in 
distrait fashion, over the swarm of townspeople and chil- 


$6 THE RED-BLOOD 

dren who encroached upon him from all sides, respectfully. 

“That’s him!” 

He did not need his mother’s identification. Along the 
sides of the carriage stretched banners, proclaiming in 
bold paint: 

PROF. EVANTUREL’s MAMMOTH EXPOSITION 

Some small surprise invaded him that the great healer 
should wear so aloofly mournful, so fragile, a mien, and 
his contempt diminished infinitesimally; the fellow looked 
smart. He glanced at the crowd. Here were Cartwright’s 
most substantial freeholders. He waved at George Boole 
and Ed Onweller, Minnie’s father. He saw his young 
brother and sisters, open-mouthed at the minstrel men. 

But all these things were on the fringe of conscious¬ 
ness; having noted them, his eyes instinctively centered 
on the musicians. The spectacle fascinated him: the 
abandoned free-arm trajectory in which the drummer’s 
right hand recurrently reached over to the left of the 
drum, and vice versa; the pennant that streamed out 
from the end of the bagpipe’s longest reed; the plaid of 
the kilts. Yet these things, too, were as nothing save 
as they were physical expressions of the music itself. 
He did not even recognize the tune; all he knew was that 
he was inexplicably, powerfully affected; in some strange 
way, the turbulent nasal timbre of the sound gripped 
him. And he was incensed that negro minstrels should 
be dancing to such a melody. 

As the parade passed on out of sight around a bend 
in the road, the emotional spring within suddenly insisted 
on vent. His eyes were wet. He was astonished, violently 
angry. 

“Real good music, after all,” said his mother. “Ay?” 

He looked down at her sharply. Her features were 
clearly visible in the light from the sitting room, and he 


IN THE TENT 


57 

was distinctly puzzled to note that the bagpipe had 
made no deep impression on her. “Real good music”— 
no better, no worse than any other. To him it had been, 
not music at all, but the primitive echo of a very part 
of himself. 

The bagpipe suddenly ceased. The procession must 
have reached the tent. Now he could hear quite clearly 
the song of a male quartette. The song itself meant 
nothing to him, but he grew restless, unconsciously, that 
he should thus be removed from the scene of excitement. 

Rebecca McNicol turned reluctantly toward the door. 
“Well-” 

“If you want to go, ma, I’ll walk over to the tent with 
you,” he said, and was pleasantly conscious of his gener¬ 
osity. “You can even go in, if you like; but don’t be 
expecting me to do the same.” 

She was pleased, but not much fooled. “Nobody’ll 
likely be at home, anyway, Denny,” she pointed out, as 
they set forth. “You’ll have to go to the tent, I’m thinkin’, 
if you’re after seein’ Minnie Onweller this night.” 

hi 

So brief was the distance uphill to the tent, they came 
upon it even before the male quartette—the two High¬ 
landers, the two minstrels, side by side—had for the 
second time completed the chorus of that popular song, 
familiar even in Ontario, “When This Cruel War Is 
Over.” 

The vocalists stood—yearning toward one another in 
the manner peculiar to male quartettes—on what appeared 
to be a small platform adjacent to the tent itself. At 
either end, fastened in tin reflectors, were a number of 
flaring tallow dips, dimly illuminating the faces of the 
multitude. 



58 


THE RED-BLOOD 


The applause died away reverently when the figure of 
Professor Evanturel displaced the quartette. The chap 
had already acquired some reputation in the village, 
McNicol knew, but he had expected nothing like this 
obvious awe. The whole affair was a preposterous fake, 
of course; the only comfort to him was his certainty that 
some of these yokels would be demanding real medical 
attention as an aftermath; and yet he could not gainsay 
the young healer carried an impressive air. His thin 
ascetic face seemed transfigured with a zeal almost holy. 

“Friends of Cartwright,” he now enunciated distinctly, 
sadly, “this is my third evening in your midst. We are 
no longer strangers. Perhaps some feeling of confidence 
has come to you. I trust so, for I can truthfully say 
that, though I have visited many cities, many countries, I 
have never yet found such intelligent people, such splendid 
audiences, as I have found in Cartwright. 

“I bid you all welcome. Herein you will discover 
some entertainment, and some profit, I hope. There is 
no obligation to purchase, but to any persons who may 
buy let me repeat my personal guaranty: your money 
back, if not entirely satisfied. The quartette will now 
render one more number, and then the exposition will 
open.” 

The listeners, perhaps three hundred souls, seemed 
under his spell already. Even McNicol, fresh from 
medical school, had to resist a curious feeling of trustful¬ 
ness in this earnest personality. Professor Evanturel had 
a real gift, the semblance of a divine mandate. 

But as he turned with dignity and stepped from the 
rostrum, McNicol had an uncomfortable baffling sense 
of having laid eyes on him before. And recently. Some¬ 
thing about the back of the fellow’s head. He kneaded 
his brain for recollection while the quartette began: 


IN THE TENT 


“How happy is the man 

Who has chosen wisdom's ways, 

And has measured out his span 

To his God in prayer and praise." 

Sacred music—and yet nobody minded: oddly, the 
hymn seemed to go not inharmoniously with the deport¬ 
ment of Professor Evanturel. A lofty mission his. Did 
not a greater than he go about miraculously curing the 
lame, the halt, and the blind? People sensed the religious 
allusion, the camp-meeting flavor; after that the whole 
proceeding took on a mystic justification, a hint of 
Heaven’s dispensation. 

The crowd now rapidly drained off into the tent that 
housed the anointed one’s magic; but McNicol, anxious 
not to be seen, remained with his mother well beyond 
the purview of the tallow dips. Only too clearly she 
wanted to follow the rest. 

“Going in, ma?” 

“Not alone, Denny. I’m not likin’-’’ 

It was no time to temporize. “No, ma, I won’t do it. 
I can’t be vouching for rank heresy like that.’’ 

She spoke to some one just behind him, and, turning, 
he could recognize Minnie Onweller. 

“Why, Wellington!’’ Even in the half light, he was 
sensible of her brick-red hair gathered back under her 
straw bonnet, her eyes slightly staring, her whole face 
somewhat vigilant and pedagogical. 

He forestalled any implication he had not been suffi¬ 
ciently ardent. “I was hoping to see you before this, 
Minnie, but-’’ 

She professed she understood his professional cares. 
“You must be tired,’’ she sympathized, and looked down 
with unerring intuition at the wrapped photograph album 
under his arm. 




6o 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“A present for you/’ he was about to say; then reflected 
he would prefer to give it when they were alone. 

His mother was staring at the album, too. The situ¬ 
ation was embarrassing. 

“Why don’t you two go in together?” he suggested, 
and detailed his professional scruples to Miss Onweller. 

He escorted them to the entrance. Within, the bag¬ 
pipe was playing once more, and it wrenched him to 
turn away. 

Just then he observed the figure of a man moving 
steathily toward him around the outside of the tent. 
McNicol, curious, stepped close to the canvas, and thus 
remained hidden until the man had nearly reached him. 

Simultaneously they caught sight of each other. It was 
Doctor Milk. 

“Going in?” asked McNicol. 

His aged rival stood pitifully inarticulate. 

“I’ve just brought my mother.” Wellington Dennison 
was torn between his scorn and an exceedingly vivid 
desire to laugh outright. “Of course, I shouldn’t think 
of going in, myself.” 

Milk had an inspiration. “I was just out takin’ the air. 
Happened to come by—nothing but an accident, Doctor. 
Nothing but an accident.” 

It was excruciatingly funny to see him take himself 
off; once he turned about, to assure himself McNicol 
had not himself entered the forbidden precincts. 

The younger man, having started homeward, paused a 
moment to listen to the alluring call of the bagpipe. By 
the Lord Harry! it really was a pity to have to stay 
away. 

Then he saw a girl approach the tent—a bit timidly, as 
had Milk. He ventured closer, and all at once saw that 
she wore a dark gray pelisse. 

The girl he had seen in the graveyard—whose faintly 


IN THE TENT 


61 


perfumed handkerchief of lace he still carried in his inner 
pocket! In the stress of things he had all but forgotten 
her. Then, too, with unaccustomed acumen, he identi¬ 
fied her companion of yesterday—Professor Evanturel. 
And no one could have budged him from this sudden 
conviction. 

The girl hesitatingly inserted herself into the tent, 
and McNicol came to a halt. The bagpipe played on 
and on. Doctor Milk had vanished. 

“It’s hardly proper ma and Minnie should be left to 
sit by themselves,” he rationalized, as he proceeded once 
more toward the entranceway. 


IV 

It so happened his mother and Miss Onweller were 
sitting next to the center aisle in the very last row of 
benches. They made no stir over his unexpected appear¬ 
ance, and the audience’s attention, fortunately, converged 
just then upon the two black-faced minstrel men who 
were emerging upon the narrow stage. McNicol stepped 
quickly behind Minnie Onweller and over the low bench 
to a seat of reassuring obscurity. 

The venture, after all, was safe enough. The audi¬ 
torium proper was badly lighted; people naturally were 
intent upon the stage, in comparison dazzlingly illumined 
by a row of oil-lamp footlights. He could steal out just 
before the end of the performance, and nobody would 
ever be the wiser. 

The twanging banjo, the dancing minstrel, the rythmi¬ 
cal cadence of the song, were captivating; but he began 
almost at once to search for the gray pelisse. It startled 
him, after he had craned his neck vainly in every direc¬ 
tion, to come upon the girl, directly in front of his mother; 
he had an errant impulse to reach out and touch her. 


62 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Minnie’s convex scrutiny was upon him, he realized. 

“What is it?” she whispered. 

He shook his head. “Wanted to see who I knew.” He 
had enough wit not to ask her about this far more 
fascinating stranger. Her eyes, in fact, did instinctively 
turn toward the silk pelisse; she gave a scarcely percep¬ 
tible shrug of hauteur. 

His own gaze he virtuously directed toward the stage. 
He must be cautious; Minnie, he suspected, could be 
easily jealous. But in that brief moment he had seen 
that the new girl was of a condition far above his own 
or Minnie Onweller’s: his masculine consciousness told 
him vaguely her clothing was fine and modish; she was 
no Cartwright dowdy. Most acutely, though, he felt 
she was beautiful. 

The minstrel act came to an end with a marvelous 
ocarina duet; and in the midst of the crowd’s applause 
the girl twisted around and glanced at his mother in 
sympathetic approbation. Her easy smile included 
Minnie Onweller, its periphery just touched McNicol; 
and he was aware her full face was vivid and colorful, 
her eyes warmly brown. 

The enticing, unfaded lips—almost sensuous—parted 
uncertainly, as if she was about to speak. Then, inter¬ 
cepting a current of expectancy through the spectators, 
she swiftly turned toward the stage again. 

Professor Evanturel had appeared, and McNicol’s 
faculties were similarly captured for a moment. What 
was there about this charlatan’s demeanor, he asked 
himself, that drew his audience to a sharp point of inten¬ 
sity even before he had begun speaking? There was a 
certain reluctance in the way he advanced to the foot¬ 
lights, a certain apologetic disdain for the lighter enter¬ 
tainment that had preceded him. Above the long frock 
coat about his slender figure, his face stood out distinctive 


IN THE TENT 


63 


and arresting. He was young—a year or two older than 
McNicol, perhaps. His visage was thin, his features 
well formed; and down across his high forehead—just 
reaching his left eyebrow—hung obliquely a heavy mass 
of black hair. But McNicol’s hostile scrutiny rested in 
the end upon the healer’s large dark eyes, humid, morbid, 
yet sensitive. 

He commenced, with sad ecstasy: 

“Ladies and gentlemen of Cartwright: For the benefit 
of those who have not attended these meetings before, I 
wish to announce once more the grand voting contest for 
the most popular lady. One vote with every ten cents’ 
worth of medicine you buy. For example, if you purchase 
a bottle of Evanturel’s Famous Liver Persuader for fifty 
cents, you get five votes. As a special inducement, with 
every one of Evanturel’s Miraculous Electric Belts, guar¬ 
anteed to cure rheumatism, blood disease in all forms, 
stomach complaint, et cetera ad infinitum , which I’m sell¬ 
ing this week at the reduced price of five dollars—with 
each belt I give you not only the usual fifty votes, but 
another fifty, forming a grand total of one hundred votes.” 

He took up a slip of paper. 

“The three leaders in the contest to-night are as follows, 
according to the judges’ report: 


Mrs. William Fergus 

Miss Onweller. 

Miss Jenny Gough. . 



Minnie gave a little exultant start. “Last night, I wasn’t 
on the list at all.” 

McNicol felt the imminence of complications. “If she’s 
expecting me to buy her any votes—” he muttered. 

Professor Evanturel was pointing out the felicitous 
fact that there was still hope for any lady to win. 

“The prize, which will be awarded at the conclusion 





THE RED-BLOOD 


64 

of Saturday night’s performance, is this wonderful string 
of coral beads, which, if you had to buy it in Toronto, 
would cost you twenty-five dollars. Genu-eyne gold) 
clasp.” 

He held the treasure aloft that all might glut their 
vision. 

A smooth scamp. McNicoi intertwined his hands 
around his knee and leaned back. Out of the rim of 
his eye he became aware of someone slinking into the 
tent. 

It was the perfidious Milk—in fancied security. 

Before McNicoi could dodge forward, their eyes met. 
Professional honors were easy. 

v 

The girl in the silk pelisse, he was dismayed to note, 
leaned forward as though enchanted, her eyes raptly fixed 
on the magnetic Evanturel, her lips a little apart. He 
quite forgot Doctor Amos Milk. 

What had she been doing with this magnificent faker 
in the cemetery? 

Miss Onweller was again prompt in pouncing upon 
his look, and whispered maliciously: 

“She’s daft over him. Can’t stay away from him.” 

He hated Minnie. He hated Evanturel and this un¬ 
known girl. All at once he was crucified with jealousy, 
an illogical sense of deep personal grievance. Still, it 
was an opportunity to identify her. 

“Who d’you mean, Min?” 

His innocence could not have deceived her, but she 
said, “That girl, there.” Then, “Jenny Gough.” 

His mind groped dully for perception. “J. G.” Of 
course, but—that other girl, his mother’s young pupil? 

“I regret I shall not be able to give you a demonstration 


IN THE TENT 


65 

to-night of EvanturePs Radiant Tapeworm Remover.” 
The professor’s somber tones seemed spoken to him 
alone. “The first demonstration will be of EvanturePs 
Painless Tooth Extractor.” 

And then, before McNicol’s distorted vision, came 
into view that shambling, pusillanimous father of his. In 
spite of the authority of the healer’s voice, the audience 
tittered. Guy McNicol unsuccessfully affected an easy 
nonchalance. 

“A bad tooth.” The professor pushed back his pa¬ 
tient’s lips. “First, a little of the Extractor rubbed 
around on the gooms.” 

The subject flinched a little at sight of the gleaming 
forceps, but a single hypnotic glance from Evanturel 
quelled him instantly. 

McNicol, junior, was far from thin skinned, but this 
was too much. He rose hurriedly, had one glimpse of 
Miss Gough slightly averting her lovely face, of Doctor 
Milk peering intently at the dental surgery, and made 
for the tent entrance. 

As he rushed out he heard his parent’s yelp of pain— 
scarcely a convincing tribute to the Tooth Extractor’s 
efficacy—then the crowd’s outburst of guffawing. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE CULT OF B. FRANKLIN 

I 

QOME inconsiderate was knocking persistently on the 
^ bedroom door. 

“Ay?” he finally collected his senses to say. 

It w r as his mother with her time-honored reveille. 

“Denny—spring to-pah!” 

Reluctantly he sat upright on the side board of the 
spindle bed, knuckling the drowsiness from his heavy 
eyes, groping in the semidarkness for his clothing. No 
adversity had the power in those days of robbing him of 
his sleep; he was in the act of stuffing his shirt tails into 
his trousers—half dressed—before he recalled last night’s 
casualty. 

Casualties, rather—for now, with even sharper concern, 
he thought of Miss Jenny Gough and the look in her 
eyes as she drank in the personality of Professor Evan- 
turel. 

It consoled him strangely to remember her handker¬ 
chief, to touch its fragile softness in his inner coat 
pocket. He felt it afforded him some small power over 
her. 

Abruptly he pulled open the door. 

“Ma, what was that girl’s name you were giving the 
organ lesson to?” 

Mrs. McNicol was alone in the kitchen, her fixed 
expression of unassuming common sense revealed by the 
lamp on the dining table. Overhead he heard the younger 
children stamping about. 

Her attention lingered on the preparations for break- 

66 


THE CULT OF B. FRANKLIN 67 

fast; already his presence in the house was taken for 
granted. 

“What girl? You mean the Gough girl?” 

“What’s her first name?” 

“Lessie.” She now looked at her son. “As sweet a 
little girl as I know, too. Why? Have you seen her 
since?” 

He shook his head glumly and returned to his bed¬ 
room. 

She called out after him: “She’s a bad cold, her sister 
Jenny was tellin’ me last night, after you went away. You 
know, the one settin’ just in front of me. Can’t take her 
lesson to-day, Lessie can’t.” 

In the darkness of his room he felt quite safe in pro¬ 
ceeding, casually: 

“Minnie was saying the Gough girl—the older one— 
was daft on that quack healer.” 

The plates clicked together as she went on methodically 
setting the table. “Mebbe so. More likely the other 
way round. She’s a fine voice, Jenny—sings in church— 
an’ everybody from the minister down is in love with 
her.” 

McNicol thought of the scrambling retreat from the 
shelter in the graveyard, and half smiled. 

“All I say is—if she’s as good as she’s bonny, she’ll 
do,” concluded his mother, inscrutably. 

His father did not appear for breakfast. McNicol 
was just as well pleased; he’d be glad if this supposed 
parent of his continued sleeping in his bedroom the rest 
of his life—never issued forth again to plague his family. 

Breakfast over and the children gone, he went for 
his cap moodily. 

“Got to see about that rig,” he told his mother, “then 
make another call on Suny Grizard. She’s not doing well. 
Mustn’t lose my first patient, you know.” 



68 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Rebecca McNicol was plucking at her eyebrows—with 
her, as with her son, an unfailing sign of anxiety and 
fatigue. 

“Wellington Dennison, your pa’s not come home yet.” 

It was on the tip of his tongue to say: “Well—and 
what of it? Let’s be hoping he never does!” But he 
saw at once, if he himself did nothing about it, his mother 
would; and in spite of his irritation, he found his heart 
visited by a sudden access of protectiveness. He had 
taken his oath to spare her these degradations; he would 
accept his new role patiently, for her sake. 

“I didn’t tell you, Denny—but he’s been gettin’ worse 
of late. He’s had the delirium three times this spring 
already. And Doctor Milk says-” 

He cut her off. “Where’d he most likely be—at the 
Inn?” 

She speculated, grave eyed. “I’d be certain, but he 
has no money. Perhaps they’d be knowin’ at the tent, 
now.” 


ii 

Every step he took seemed an infinitesimal fraction of 
repayment for all he owed her—life itself, and the chance 
to lay hold on life. It afforded him a kind of happiness 
unusual to him to blot out those insistent, recurrent 
cravings of his to be gone from all this petty puppet 
world of Cartwright and fling himself into a broader 
arena where the favors were worth playing for. 

The very socks he wore were her knitting. And he 
could go salvaging his worthless pseudo-father every day 
as long as he lived, and still be irreparably in her debt. 

None too pleasant a job, admittedly, and an undoubted 
handicap to his professional success. Even rather absurd, 
this hunting out one’s parent in barrooms, pleading with 



THE CULT OF B. FRANKLIN 69 

him to come home; it reminded him of a cheap melo¬ 
drama he had once seen in Ann Arbor. 

“I cut a pretty figure—playing little Nell,” he reflected, 
sardonically. 

Professor Evanturel’s tent looked barren and bleak in 
the early morning light. All the glamour of night, of 
crowd enthusiasm, of human tenancy, was gone. The 
entrance curtain flapped desolately; the interior was as 
of a musty, deserted theater. 

Disillusion grew caustic when he came up to the five 
members of the troupe sleeping on cots near the stage. 
Toes protruded from blankets, unshaven faces seemed 
choked by slumber, tw T o of the four entertainers lay on 
their backs and snored raspingly. Evanturel alone, on 
the farthest cot, slept like a gentleman, his pale morbid 
face on one arm. 

The eyes of the nearest minstrel opened viscidly, 
blinked inimically. 

“What’s up with you?” he growled. His high talent 
for jocularity he reserved for larger audiences, it seemed. 

McNicol moved on toward the leader of the crew. 

“God damn!” called out the minstrel. “Leave him be!” 

But the interloper shook his man by the shoulders, 
undeterred. 

“What the devil!” said Professor Evanturel. “Hello!” 

McNicol stared implacably down. “Where’s my 
father?” 

“Your father!. . . All right, Joe.” This to the min¬ 
strel whose swift advance threatened the intruder’s rear. 
“And who’s your father?” 

“McNicol’s the name.” 

Evanturel passed his long, uncalloused fingers over his 
somewhat small jaw, yawned slightly, then looked up with 
a show of respectful interest. 

“You’re Doctor McNicol? Speak low, will you? These 


THE RED-BLOOD 


70 

boys want their sleep. Your father— Oh yes, the nice 
old chap who was helping us out.” 

McNicol, though he noted the charlatan’s refined 
accents and perfect hospitality, refused to let the pro¬ 
ceedings develop into a friendly social visit. It assisted 
him in keeping the affair in the proper key to detect a 
snicker of derision from Joe. 

“Helping you out—ay, if that’s what you call filling 
him up with tapeworm bellywash, pulling out all his 
teeth.” His host raised a deprecating hand. “Listen 
now—I’m telling you here and now, my friend, you’re 
to leave him alone henceforth—or I warn you, you’ll 
take the consequences.” 

It seemed to affect Professor Evanturel not one whit 
that he was being thundered at from above by an offen¬ 
sively threatening young man who refused to be governed 
by the amenities, who gave every indication, in fact, of 
being about to resort to crude physical measures. 

“Don’t alarm yourself further, Doctor,” he said, not 
less courteously than before. “Your father is no longer 
associated with us. In brief, he quit last night; and in 
spite of the fact he’d thereby broken his contract with 
me, I paid him his salary in full.” 

McNicol glared down an interval longer, with an un¬ 
comfortable feeling of having been thwarted, then turned 
brusquely toward the entrance. 

“It is just possible, Doctor,” pursued Professor Evan- 
turel’s polite solicitude, “just possible you may find your 
father at the Queen’s Inn.” 


hi 

Again it was Mrs. Ben Beatty he first encountered. 
But now she nodded, and shrugged her listless shoulders 
toward the tavern’s barroom door. 



THE CULT OF B. FRANKLIN 


7i 


The scene within came as a perceptible surprise to 
McNicol; he never could forget it. His eyes ran over 
the half dozen figures soddenly asleep on the floor around 
the great stove; it was among these he counted on finding 
his father. He could scarcely breathe the close hot 
air, scarcely see through the pall of stale tobacco smoke. 

“Another round, Ben—and a toast to D’Arcy McGee, 
the greatest of them all. Everybody drink!” 

His father’s accents, he was certain; but even now his 
smarting eyes refused corroboration. But no one else 
would be thus saluting McGee, the Canadian leader of 
the Irish Liberals—cordially detested by every soul in 
Cartwright except his father. As well expect a toast to 
Sir John MacDonald, in a riding committed heart and 
soul to George Brown! 

The man nearest the door, unknown to McNicol, veered 
around and caught sight of him. 

“Oh, Guy!” this stranger called to the far end of the 
bar, “Here’s a new one.” 

Ben Beatty, seemingly quite fresh after the all-night 
drinking bout, shouted a recognition. But McNicol, still 
convergent upon his one purpose, strode rapidly past the 
row of limp forms till he came to his father. 

Then it was his surprise reached its climax. Guy 
McNicol stood erect, a whisky glass in his left hand, a 
cocked pistol in his right. He appeared entirely sober; 
what astonished his son, in fact, was his complete control 
of the situation and himself. All these other louts seemed 
to hang on his words; he was the center of the picture. 
His eyes were clear and commanding; a certain force, a 
magnetic quality, issued from his customarily apologetic, 
slouching figure. He dominated the room magnificently. 

“The One-Thousand-and-One Society’s drinkin’ to 
D’Arcy McGee,” he repeated, and covered the group with 
his pistol. Half awed, half amused, they lifted their 


72 THE RED-BLOOD 

glasses. Then, to his son, imperiously, “You too, my 
boy.” 

McNicol, though amazed by the transformation in his 

sire, acted effectively, as usual. 

“Enough! You’re coming home with me!” He 

wrenched the pistol instantly from his father’s hand, 

knocked the glass to the floor, and jerked him toward the 

door. Guy McNicol severed fropi the bar seemed 

enfeebled once more; he resisted but weakly. 

The One-Thousand-and-One Societv was w T ith its col- 

* 

lapsed tyrant, of course. Angry protests arose. 

“Leave him alone!” objected Ben Beatty. “He ain’t 
had his two gallon yet. Has he, boys?” 

At the door, McNicol turned fiercely and published his 
second warning: “You’re to sell him no more drink, 
Beatty. He’s not to come inside this stinking hole again, 
ever—or you’ll rue it!” 


IV 

“Now get up on your legs—see if you can walk.” 

The sun was rising; McNicol had an instant’s vague 
perception of the ironic discrepancy between the vast 
nobility of the cloudless sky, the bold hills already slightly 
caressed with green—and the street ahead, the shabby 
handiwork of man. 

The radiant light seemed to have shrunken Guy Mc- 
Nicol’s final remnant of insubordination. He was his 
futile pathetic self once again; he could scarcely stand 
up; he bore heavily on his son; his features were flaccid. 
Worse than that, he began to weep noisily. 

“I want to die. I’m no good. I’m old—never be 
young again.” 

“Come along, and don’t be a fool!” 

“You don’t know, Denny. You’re young. But listen 


THE CULT OF B. FRANKLIN 


73 

to me.” With maudlin gravity he tried to turn toward 
his son. “Don’t do like me-” 

“Needn’t fret yourself—no danger of that.” 

“Don’t sacrifice your life reformin’ the world, doin’ 
things for the people. They never ’predate it. Take me 
an’ the Canadian Rebellion-” 

It was a nasty job dragging one’s besotted parent— 
reputed parent, anyway—along the muddy road. “Don’t 
fret yourself, I tell you. Thank God, I’m no son of 
yours.” 

McNicol, senior, was sufficiently shocked to stop crying 
an instant. “What’s this you’re sayin’, Denny—no son 
of mine! Don’t blame you for wishin’ you weren’t.” 
The tears recommenced. “But you got a little of me 
in you, all the same. Watch out for it. Don’t be a 
reformer, like me.” 

McNicol felt more convinced than ever. He repeated 
doggedly: “I’m no son of yours.” 

“Not, ay?” His father’s faculties still functioned! 
feebly. “Look at my ears—then look at yours.” In the 
middle of his lamentations he laughed triumphantly. 

And even as McNicol looked, he knew this broken- 
down, obscene old creature was inescapably his own 
father. How inexplicable he should have overlooked this 
one link of convincing physical evidence. The ear was 
peculiar enough to have attracted his attention—long, 
narrow, oblique, and wholly lacking its tragus. His own 
ears identical. 

The proof bit into him unpleasantly. He found himself 
wondering what hidden tendency, what weakening trait, 
he had inherited as the inward counterpart of that peculiar 
ear. To his father’s maunderings he gave no heed. 
McNicol, senior, was forever talking of the lost causes 
of his youth—the Canadian Rebellion of 1838, especially, 
whose untimely collapse had forced him to flee to New 




74 


THE RED-BLOOD 


York State for a year. As a young man he had evidently 
been an unpractical visionary, embracing first one nos¬ 
trum for all the world’s ills, then another. 

“That’s what made me what I am to-day,” he sobbed. 
“Tryin’ to help the people.” 

They were almost home now, thank Heaven. His son, 
revolted, ashamed, thanked a kindly destiny for keeping 
the road deserted. 

Then from his own house emerged a woman—not his 
mother—and approached them rapidly. He would not 
have minded any one else in the world so much; it was 
Miss Jenny Gough, he saw. 

With one haughty contemptuous glance she compre¬ 
hended the situation—drunken Guy McNicol pitching 
along on the shoulder of his red-faced son—then swept 
fastidiously past in a blur of crinoline and curls. 

But from the depths of McNicol’s abasement suddenly 
leaped a clear and revivifying image. The picture— 
gleaned from some schoolbook years ago—of young Ben 
Franklin trudging along the streets of Philadelphia, a 
poor working boy, more insignificant even than himself— 
snubbed by just such a young aristocrat as Miss Jenny 
Gough. 

And he said to himself, with all the power of youthful 
desire: 

“By God! I’m going to marry that girl some day!” 



CHAPTER VIII 


THE GOOD BOOK 

I 

I N spite of his preoccupation, McNicol rather liked 
young Lessie Gough. She had an expression of appeal¬ 
ing innocence, and a friendly way of smiling up at him. 

As he snapped his medicine case shut, James Gough 
entered the sick room. 

“How do you find your patient to-day, Doctor?” 
“Better. Fever down a whole degree. She’ll be up 
by the first of the week.” 

The three smiled cheerfully. 

McNicol added: “Next time, she’d best stay in when 
it rains.” 

“Ay—and stay away from tent shows,” warned Gough. 
McNicol no longer cherished any awe of the mill 
owner. Gough was a mild and slightly deaf man of fifty, 
the prevalent fringe of gray whiskers bordering his 
shrewd face. His eyes were small—so small the whites 
were rarely visible; his mouth pursed together in little 
vertical folds. He was almost too amiable, in McNicol’s 
view; it seemed out of keeping that one of his station 
should not be impressively gruff. How else, indeed, is 
superiority to be recognized? 

Lessie’s somewhat plain face became suddenly inspir¬ 
ited. “Oh, did you hear the news, father? Sister’s in 
the lead in that voting contest for the coral beads!” 
“Nay, now—you’re joking,” chaffed Gough. One 

75 


THE RED-BLOOD 


76 

never would have suspected he was the richest man in 
Cartwright, that he had lived most of his life in metro¬ 
politan Toronto. 

McNicol clouded a little. Charlatans like Evanturel 
were not proper subjects for jesting. Gough would laugh 
out of the other side of his mouth, if he knew about that 
little affair in the graveyard shelter. 

“Fll be going,” he said. 

“Just a moment, Doctor, and I’ll go across to town 
with you.” 

He left McNicol alone in the parlor while he went 
upstairs. The young physician glanced about the room, 
in spite of himself impressed. The luxuriousness of itl 
His eyes fell on two large new books on the table. Les 
Miserables: he read the title curiously. And he w^as the 
physician of this resplendent household! He—not Amos 
Milk. Jenny Gough herself had been on the way home 
from summoning him, when he and his father encountered 
her so disastrously, yesterday morning. 

On the instant his bride-elect opened the outer door 
and entered the parlor. 

They stood as if turned to marble. McNicol had been 
wishing, every moment of his three professional calls, 
that this very miracle might come to pass. Yet now he 
was a country gawk, almost letting his lower jaw drop, 
staring tongue tied down at the new Brussels carpet. 

“Dr. McNicol, isn’t it?” 

She smiled charmingly, graciously, as if upon an equal. 
He nodded with simulated gravity, the while he flayed 
his soul for its shameful doubtings of her radiant goodness. 

“I’ve heard so much about you,” she was saying. “Are 
you staying on in Cartwright?” 

“I don’t know yet.” He tried to enunciate slowly, 
without the provincial twang. 

James Gough, failing obtusely—as fathers will—to 


THE GOOD BOOK 


77 

perceive he was invading holy ground, collared him just 
then. 

“All ready, Doctor?” 

McNicol suffered himself to be led forth, as in a 
trance. His new felicit}^ crumpled considerably, however, 
when he descried the figure of Professor Evanturel hastily 
withdrawing from view on the far shore of the Conestoga. 

“She’s been out walking with him again this morning I” 

ii 

Some nebulous intuition propelled him past the front 
stoop and around the corner of his house. What he saw 
drew an exclamation of anger from him. He dropped 
his medicine case to the sod and began creeping steathily 
along the high tight-board fence that bordered the 
McNicol vegetable garden and back yard. 

Before he had progressed one half the distance he was 
discovered by the smallest of the little cluster of boys 
crowding against the fence. 

“Here he comes!” shrieked this sentinel, and the whole 
gang, with one frightened look at McNicol, scrambled 
up the road in precipitate flight. He chased them a few 
rods; they dropped their shinny sticks and ran the faster. 
A boulder almost tripped him. He halted, sent a stone 
and an intimidating imprecation after them. Back at the 
fence, he looked around. They were out of sight, still 

running for dear life, probably. 

Knowing only too painfully what they had been looking 
at, he nevertheless approached the broken board that 
afforded a view of the yard within. And at first he could 
see nothing grotesque. Some of the ground his mother 
had recently been plowing. On the neai side oi this 
patch, McNicol observed one or two stakes driven into 


THE RED-BLOOD 


78 

the earth—ludicrous reminders of the great real estate 
boom of 1857, when his father, like everyone else, had 
feverishly plotted every inch of ground into building 
lots. 

Then at last his eyes found their goal. 

Guy McNicol stood at the remote end of the long 
yard. He was in his shirt sleeves of coarse gray wool; 
his shapeless trousers and stoga boots were feculent with 
mud. Hatless, he stared fixedly, cataleptically, toward 
the house. In his hand was a heavy club. A brood of 
hens coursed warily about him, weaving in and out of 
the near-by currant bushes. 

All at once, with no preliminary movement, he exe¬ 
cuted a sudden frenzied spring into the air, twisting a 
little toward the currant bushes. The chickens scurried 
away. Uttering no sound, he began striking at the bushes 
with his club, insensately, madly, in the last reaches of 
frantic terror. 

McNicol looked on unmoved, noting dispassionately 
the suggestion of physical feebleness in his father’s 
delirium. This thing had been going on for forty-eight 
hours; the lunatic had refused all food; sometimes he 
would fall asleep for a time, on the floor of the back 
shed. This was his fourth attack, Mrs. McNicol said. 

“The beast!” 

Guy McNicol now stared unseeingly at the house once 
more—till a fresh onslaught of imaginary serpents roused 
him to his crazed reprisal. 

“Thank God, whatever else I’ve inherited from him, I’ll 
never be a drunkard.” 

In cold disgust his son started to turn away, then 
suddenly began scaling the fence. In the midst of his 
mania, McNicol, senior, had fallen weakly to the ground, 
and now lay inert. One or two of the bolder chickens, 



THE GOOD BOOK 


79 

brave fellows, were already venturing near him with 
tilted heads, inquiringly. 


hi 

Returning home toward the setting sun in the rig he 
had rented from the obliging Reverend Cockburn, Mc- 
Nicol, junior, was not surprised to discover the gray 
mare and top buggy of his rival still in front of the 
house. His father, in his one brief interval of full 
consciousness, had perversely called upon Doctor Milk to 
save him. 

He was considerably taken aback, however, when he 
perceived Minnie Onweller coming down the porch steps. 

“Oh, Denny”—her eyelids were red with protracted 
weeping—“I’m so sorry for you!” 

The situation was embarrassing. He had no hesitation 
at all about jilting her, but he dreaded the scene she 
would make when she knew his infidelity. It only made 
matters worse that she had spent the whole afternoon 
helping his mother. 

“I felt my place was here.” Her school-teacher’s face 
was homely—just now, especially, with her tears; but 
what chiefly alienated him was her virtuous dowdiness. 
Her brick-red hair hung down lank and wispy over her 
ears—without a trace of curl. It was hateful to be under 
obligation to her. “I’ll be back as soon’s ever I’ve cooked 
a bite for pa.” 

He joined his mother and Milk in the front bedroom. 
The decrepit physician was fussily ponderous, as usual. 
Mrs. McNicol gazed down dry eyed at the bed. Her 
husband, for the moment, was conscious, but palpably 
weak—as docile as a child. With a slight movement, 
indicating she supposed the two physicians wished to be 
left alone, she went from the room. 


8 o 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol, none too sentient ever, nevertheless became 
grudgingly aware of the lack in Doctor Milk’s demeanor 
of any gusto, of triumphant condescension; and he was 
surprised at the old man’s all too evident perturbation. 
His competitor, it suddenly came to him, really liked his 
father. 

Guy McNicol closed his eyes for a moment, and Doctor 
Milk looked quickly around with an expression that was 
undisguisedly mournful, pressed his lips together, and 
shook his head significantly. 

The verdict came to McNicol as enough of a shock to 
clarify his senses, to stimulate his mind to an unnatural 
attentiveness. He had no feeling of sorrow; quite pro¬ 
fanely, indeed, there promptly bubbled up the sharp per¬ 
ception that now he would be free to go where he chose. 
And he also thought: 

“Here is an end to humiliation and disgrace.” 

Yet the imminence of death could not but move him 
profoundly. 

Guy McNicol had no prescience of the end, it seemed. 
He had opened his eyes and was whispering something. 

“What does he say?” 

Old Milk seemed about to weep. “Wants to know when 
we can go fishing.” To the dying man, he said: “Won’t 
be long, Guy. I’m going in the morning, mayhap—bring 
you a nice lake trout, ay?” 

His father had heretofore paid no heed to McNicol, 
but now his dull gaze shifted from Doctor Milk. 

“He’s trying to talk to you, Denny.” 

McNicol bent down and heard his parent saying, 
“Don’t you go tryin’ to reform the world, Denny.” 

A wave of unconsciousness inundated him. His face, 
Ineffably worn and feeble-looking, became an imoassive 
mask—as if with the withdrawal of his soirit. Only his 
lips twitched, reflexively, without the guiding volition of 


THE GOOD BOOK 


81 


his brain. On the bedspread his long imaginative hands 
—not unlike Professor Evanturel’s, thought his son— 
relaxed and flexed a little, rhythmically. 

Still McNicol had no thought of pity, of grief. Only 
of tragic wastage. 

Doctor Milk blew his nose and nodded toward the 
doorway. “Better have your mother in, ay?” 

He found her finally in the unused room upstairs, 
directly above where her husband lay. Her back was 
toward him; she was bending over a low table; and when 
she heard him and turned around, he was amazed—and 
thrilled—to see the repetition of that unprecedented thing: 
a tear coursing from her high cheek bone into the valley 
of her sunken cheek, glistening a bit in the faint light from 
the window. 

As long as she lived, he never beheld a third tear. 

She made as if to close the large book on the table, 
then: “Look.” 

He identified it as a Bible—an unused Bible, quite dis¬ 
tinguishable from the Holy Word below in the parlor. 
On the open leaf he descried a marriage record in faded 
ink; under it, the ferrotype of a young man and woman, 
he sitting in an ornate leather chair, she standing at his 
side, her hand on his shoulder, her little finger studiously, 
delicately crooked up a little; a book on the floor reclining 
against one leg of the chair—the note of culture and 
refinement; a heavy curtain incomprehensively flowing 
from somewhere down across the table next the chair, 
with a grand effect. 

He was puzzled, groped for the significance of the 
photograph. Then he perceived that the young woman 
so solemnly and so hopefully gazing out at him was his 
mother; and this handsome young buck, whose fire of 
youth, whose brilliancy and talent almost leaped forth 
at McNicol—this must be his father. 




82 


THE RED-BLOOD 


She looked up at him with an acuteness of sorrow, an 
agony of disillusion, that transfixed him, carried across 
even to him its record of high young hope broken, of 
high faith and trust beaten down. And he understood 
—she, too, was thinking of tragic wastage. 

She turned and closed the Bible. 

“You’d best come down, directly,” he said. 

As he followed her downstairs he was conscious of his 
own virtue and all the strength of his twenty-three years. 
He would never wreck the life of the woman he married 
—delicious visions of Miss Jenny Gough involuntarily 
filled his brain; never go harum-scaruming after dreams 
and impossible visions, while his wife broke her back with 
drudgery. 

“I’ll be a good provider, Jenny,” he caught himself 
whispering. 

And he’d support and protect his mother, too, the rest 
of her days. 

As she passed silently into the death chamber he 
dropped back. For all at once he had a disturbing, 
curiosity-breeding remembrance of his mother’s hand 
covering the lower part of that fateful page in the unused 
Bible. He stole back up the staircase. 

Subsconsciously, he noted the old trunk whence she had 
exhumed the book, then with a powerful focusing of atten¬ 
tion turned up the cover and the first two pages of the 
ancient volume, and read—underneath the ferrotype—in 
flowing, elaborate scroll: 


Guy McNicol 
Aged 28 


Rebecca Youell 
Aged 29 


UNITED IN HOLY WEDLOCK 
April 20, 1848 


CHAPTER IX 


SUNY GRIZARD SPEAKS 

I 

I T must have been midnight when he closed the Grizard 
gate behind the buggy and began leading his weary 
horse down the corduroy road into the forest. For count¬ 
less hours—ever since the moment he crept downstairs 
and out of his house—he had been driving through the 
country, without purpose, without destination. His 
mother he had not seen again. He did not know posi¬ 
tively whether his father was dead or alive. 

The concrete fact stunned him; being prepared for 
calamity seldom eases the force of the blow when it 
eventually falls. To such a one as McNicol, however 
coarse-grained, the discovery of illicit birth seems the 
ultimate disgrace, an incubus never to be shaken off, a 
taint of blood never to be exorcised. He was laid low, and 
it seemed to him at first he could never rise again and 
go on. 

Gradually, however, his torment began to give off cer¬ 
tain apperceptions. By some weird coincidence, it was 
precisely fifteen years ago to-day his father- and mother 
had been married. April 20th. His numb brain found 
some surcease in the calculation of finite time. 

He must have been eight years old then. All at once 
he remembered: it was toward the end of April he had 
run away from Aleck Grizard. It could not have been 

83 



THE RED-BLOOD 


84 

many days after the marriage that he had arrived in 
Cartwright, hungry, footsore, terror-stricken; had sud¬ 
denly recognized his mother through the window, smiling 
happily at this strange man he had never seen before; 
had opened the door and flung himself into her arms and 
sobbed for protection from Grizard. 

“You’ll never have to go back now,” she had said 
presently. 

His father spoke: “Is this the boy?” 

How he hated them now—yes, even the mother he 
had worshiped all his life. A loose woman. 

Instantly there came to him the image of the girl on 
the man’s lap in the Queen’s Inn—and his mother’s tear. 

“All the crying in the w T orld won’t wash that out,” 
he thought, bitterly. “From you or me, either.” 

Did he ever want to see her again? Could he face 
her without casting stones? 

Then an impetuous urgency had possessed him to drain 
the last drop in the cup, to know every detail and cir¬ 
cumstance of his shame. He remembered Suny Grizard 
—surely too ill, even now, for cross-examination; yet he 
had straightway taken his bearings and turned the horse 
toward the Drayton post road. 

And now he saw a light still burned in the log cabin. 

11 

When, by volunteering to sit up with the patient, he had 
finally got rid of that old nuisance, the midwife—Aleck 
Grizard, he had learned, was in Cartwright, looking for 
him—McNicol turned toward the bed, with a certain 
tightening of determination. 

Suny Grizard was an exceedingly sick woman; the 
threatened kidney complication had actually developed, 
and alarmingly. Her disfiguring freckles stood out 


SUNY GRIZARD SPEAKS 


85 


vividly on her long Scotch face; and the brushing of her 
hair straight back over her head, away from her forehead, 
had accentuated the anaemic unloveliness of her features. 
In spite of her pallor, he knew she was running a high 
temperature. 

Still, she would probably get well, McNicol thought. 

Whether she lived or died, he intended to have the 
truth out of her to-night. No thought of his duty as 
a physician withheld him; he did not care a straw whether 
or no she was strong enough for the ordeal. 

“Listen to me,” he said, quietly, as he sat down. “Can 
you understand what I’m saying?” 

He would have given her some whisky, if necessary, to 
stimulate her consciousness. But she moved her chin up 
and down feebly. 

“We’re alone, Mrs. Grizard, and I’ve something to say 
to you.” He lunged straight for his goal, as usual. 
“You’re grateful to me for trying to save your life?” 

Again that recumbent nod. Her lips moved, “Yes.” 

He had no scruples. “You’re going to die”—her eyelids 
fluttered—“probably.” He paused. “Before you go you 
must tell me about my mother and father.” 

He waited. Her eyes had closed, but only a faint sound 
of mewing distress issued from her dry lips. Pie felt 
balked by her impassivity. 

“I know, anyway,” and he told her of the marriage 
record. “My mother ’d want you to tell me.” 

Still that same unflecked immobility. It was as if 
their two wills were invisibly grappling over the rude bed¬ 
stead, and the sick woman’s were the stronger. He com¬ 
pressed his lips impatiently, glanced at the dim-burning 
lamp near her pillow. 

“There’s no reason for not telling me, now. My father’s 
dead.” 

She opened her eyes and stared at him—as if it had 


86 THE RED-BLOOD 

been Guy McNicol, not his wife, who must be guarded 
by her silence. 

He pressed his advantage: 

“I want to know; I’ve got to know. My mother didn’t 
adopt me, did she?” 

She moistened her lips. He could barely catch her faint 
response: 

“No, she had you.” 

He hitched his chair closer. 

“But—but they weren’t married then?” 

She asked for water, seemed anxious to speak further, 
then suddenly collapsed. 

McNicol walked up and down the room, scowling. She 
was willing to tell him the tragic story and could not. He 
was unable to find Grizard’s whisky jug, and approached 
the bed to ask her if her husband had taken it with 
him. 

She was trying to say something. 

“Letters,” he made out. 

“Where?” 

She was too weak to point, but he followed her eyes 
to the area above the doorway. 

Aleck Grizard might come home any moment. McNicol 
hurriedly moved the table across the room; by standing 
on it he had access to the zone her mute gaze prescribed. 
For fifteen minutes he explored each crevice between the 
logs. 

She spoke once: “Under—roof.” 

He kept bumping his head against the low rafters, grew 
constantly more exasperated. A dozen times he thought 
he heard footsteps outside, expected to see the door flung 
open. Then at last his fingers distinguished a narrow 
niche where a log had rotted, and pursuing its rough sur¬ 
face encountered the feel of a paper packet. 

He did not take time to marvel at the patient search 


SUNY GRIZARD SPEAKS 87 

Suny Grizard must have made, to put hands on such a 
hiding place. 

Upon the instant of disclosure she had closed her eyes 
again, as if in contentment after her vast effort. 

hi 

Two of the letters he reread several times, his heavy 
lower jaw set tight. 

W ednesday 

Aug. 11, 1847 

Dear friend Suny 

I am in great trouble Suny are you willing and able to help 
me. 

Nobody can ever say I haven’t looked after my boy as I 
should or that he hasnt had a good home. I thought I had 
lived down past things Suny you know what I mean. I never 
concealed anything and most of the people respect me, but a 
friend told me this morning the minister had ritten to Guelph 
about the boy and wanted them to take him there because 
they say he has no father. 

Well Suny they will never get me to tell who his father is, 
and what is more, they will never take the boy to Guelph if I 
can help it. 

I am sending this to you by Aleck. If they try taking him 
away from me, will you hide him at your place for a short time 
until the danger is over. Send your anser by Aleck. 

Becky. 

Monday a. m. 

Apr. 18, 1848 

Dear friend, 

Well suny and how are you and what do you think I have 
just heard from him. His wife has died and he is coming to 
Cartwright from Stratford to see me day after tomorrow. 
When I got his letter, I knelt down and thanked God. If all 
goes well and he still wants me it looks like all my troubles 


88 


THE RED-BLOOD 


were over and we will begin all over and I can have my darling 
boy back. I want you to see the father sometime he is so 
handsome and fine. 

—McNicol remembered his mother’s second tear— 

And oh I am so grateful for you tending after him so good this 
last hard year. I can hardly wait to see him again. Aleck says 
he is looking so well and is so happy at your house. I pray 
God to bless you both for all you have done for me. 

I will let you know in a few days. Wish me happiness, 
Suny. I will come for Denny myself mayhap. 

Beck. 

P. S.—Does my boy ever speak of me? 


CHAPTER X 


AMOS MILK BENDS THE KNEE 

I 

W HEN he looked up at last, he could see through the 
window, dimly, pale wraiths of tree trunks griev¬ 
ing infinitely in the hush of the approaching dawn. 

McNicol aroused himself to action. Suny Grizard slept 
deeply. The two letters he slid into an inside pocket, out 
of which mockingly ascended to his nostrils the faint per¬ 
fume from Jenny Gough’s embroidered handkerchief; the 
balance of the packet he returned to the niche in the log. 

“She’s on the mend,” he said, softly, after he had sum¬ 
moned the puttering midwife. “When she wakes up, tell 
her I put them back. No, that’s all—I put them back. 
She’ll understand.” 

Past familiar objects in the clearing—the ramshackle 
jumper sled; the burned-out stump and the billet of wood, 
attached to a spring-pole, which served Aleck Grizard 
as mortar and pestle to grind his corn—he made his way 
quickly, and started home. 

A turtle dived from the corduroy road into a puddle, 
his horse shied violently once at a rattlesnake, and just 
before he reached the post road a deer went crashing 
through the underbrush; ordinarily his hunter’s sense 
would have taken keen note, but now he remained obliv¬ 
iously introverted. 

By the time he came out upon the thoroughfare and 
entered the buggy, it was light enough to read. The 

89 


90 


THE RED-BLOOD 


horse started forward through the chilly, lifeless air, but 
McNicol checked it, and once more sought the faint and 
scarcely legible scrawl of those letters, as if he wanted 
to test their reality by the daylight. 

Always his weary eyes came back to that final post¬ 
script: 

“Does my boy ever speak of me?” 

He let the impatient horse have its head then; but as 
they went swiftly forward in an unequal race with the 
dawn, his glance never lifted to the miry road ahead. 
Mental stress was unnatural to him; never before had 
he thought and felt so intensely for so long a time. Some 
climax, some discharge of his emotions, had to come. 

Thus he discovered himself abruptly bursting into tears. 
The whole tragedy had focused in the sudden vivid pic¬ 
ture of his mother writing that postscript. The ineffable 
pathos of the thing! Her bearing the shame alone, 
refusing to implicate the man who had seduced her. More 
than that, her pitiful new hope of happiness as his wife. 
But most of all, her sublimely loyal devotion to himself, 
her son. 

And he had been reviling her, just now—saying he 
would never see her face again. 

It was entirely characteristic of McNicol to end upon 
a sentimental note, yet he began anathematizing his tears 
almost at once. 

“You’re as much a fool as your father.” 

He had been greatly relieved, nevertheless, and re¬ 
freshed. His mood vaulted almost to tranquillity; he 
lifted his heavy eyes to the road and then to the pale 
sky, slowly warming to azure; felt the imminence of the 
sun behind him; noted with a degree of interest the 
flight of a cloud of passenger pigeons. 

“Must be thousands.” 

He thought he heard, very faintly, the howl of a wolf 


AMOS MILK BENDS THE KNEE 


9i 


—then, near at hand, came once more the final yodling 
call of a loon. He looked about him; yes, the lake lay 
over to the left, at the end of the narrow intersecting 
roadway just ahead. 

As McNicol glanced up this lane he fancied he caught 
some movement in its obscure depths, and a scarcely 
audible sound of distress. He halted the horse instantly; 
and in the act, the south wind bore to his senses a strong 
and acrid odor. 

“Skunks!” He wished he had his rifle with him. 

He saw now it was a man running toward him franti¬ 
cally. Every few yards he seemed to halt an instant, 
reach into a basket at his side, and hurl something into 
the lane behind him. All at once, the man tripped over 
the fish pole he carried, and when he scrambled to his 
feet McNicol perceived it was Doctor Milk. 

He arrived at the post road, panting, exhausted, an 
expression of enormous relief in his staring eyes when 
he saw the rig. As he half fell info it he shouted to 
McNicol: 

“Drive for your life, Denny!” He seized a last fish 
from his basket, threw it passionately toward the entrance 
to the lane. 

“Polish kitties!” He could hardly speak. “Polish 
kitties—Siberian mother!” 

He surveyed the empty basket ruefully. 

n 

The lower sank Doctor Milk’s spirits, the higher 
McNicol’s rose. He did not neglect mentioning he was 
on his way back from Aleck Grizard’s and that Suny 
Grizard would live. 

The old man leaned forward forlornly. “All them nice 
trout gone. Things running against me nowadays.” 


92 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol was by now completely jocular. “Oh, cheer 
up, Doctor. Here—have a cigar!” 

Milk twisted off the end of the cheroot and they both 
lighted up. The uncommon luxury seemed to lighten the 
incompetent’s melancholy. 

“Say, now, Denny. I’ve been giving considerable 
thought to this thing,” he gasped out in that strangu¬ 
lated wheeze of his. “I like you, I’m wantin’ to help you. 
I’m thinkin’ I might take you into partnership.” 

“Well, Doctor, that’s grand of you.” McNicol enjoyed 
incredibly the old foozler’s air of generosity. He tried 
to appear overcome with the magnanimity of the offer. 

“Ye’ll do it?” Milk asked, anxiously. 

His former disciple shook his head. “Much as I’m 
appreciating the compliment.” 

“Ah, well.” The senile one surveyed his broken fish 
pole and empty basket tragically. His easy condescension 
seeped away. He let his cigar go out. 

McNicol decided to let him worry a bit. “My father’s 
dead, of course?” he changed the subject. 

“Ay.” The recollection served to deepen the old man’s 
woe. “And a fine man gone. Not so fine as your ma— 
but nobody understood him the way I did. Nobody 
understood him at all, Denny—how life kept trippin’ him 
up. My best friend, he was. And now his boy won’t go 
partners wi’ me.” 

His small figure, huddled in obvious defeat, was 
enough of a triumph for McNicol. 

“I’ll tell you why I won’t, Doctor. Have a light? It’s 
because I’m leaving Cartwright—going to Detroit to 
enlist.” 

“You be!” Milk’s relief was ludicrous. 

“Monday morning,” said McNicol. “I’ll turn my 
patients over to you.” Then, as a final shaft, “But when 
the war’s done, I’ll be back.” 



CHAPTER XI 


HE PRESENTS THE ALBUM 

I 

^X 7 ' 0 U’LL be goin’ to see Minnie to-night and say 
A good-by?” 

His mother set down the smoothing iron and hung his 
shirt over the back of the chair. She was in her black 
Orleans dress; the house was still pervaded with the 
sickish odor of funeral flowers. 

He continued to pack his bag. 

“She was complainin’ she hadn’t hardly laid eyes on 
you,” his mother went on, contriving a glance into his 
bedroom. “I said you’d doubtless be cornin’ to-night. 
She’ll be expectin’ you.” 

McNicol quickly transferred the two letters from his 
pocket to the depths of the valise. He had said no word 
of his discover}^ to her; and she had apparently noticed 
nothing of his agitation. 

Now he acknowledged her inquiry. “Too soon after 
the funeral to be thinking of such things,” he set forth. 
“I should stay with you.” 

“No, now,” she countered, “callin’ on Minnie’s a duty. 
She’s a good girl and she’s expectin’ you.” He inter¬ 
cepted her shrewd glance. “Just be takin’ that present 
of yours to her—make her feel happy.” 

He did not even attempt to feign surprise. 

“Minnie’s feelin’ right bad to-night—what with your 
goin’ off again and her losin’ the votin’ contest last night. 

93 


THE RED-BLOOD 


94 

I felt so sorry for her I told her you had a little present 
you were wantin’ to give her.” 

“Ma!” He was irritated by the compulsion she had 
put upon him. 

She pretended to disregard his annoyance. “Everybody 
says she won the coral beads by right, but that sneakin’ 
professor fixed it so’s his own girl got ’em.” 

This was coming near home. 

“His own girl?” His tone was carefully casual. 

“Ay—Jenny Gough. Plenty of fine feathers, but not 
half the woman Minnie is.” 

He did not outwardly reveal he had detected the sig¬ 
nificance of her inflection—but where under heaven had 
she discovered his new devotion? 

“May have danced with the Prince of Wales in Toronto, 
like they say; but she’ll bear watchin’.” 

He laughed. “What’s the matter with her, ma? Only 
last Thursday you were telling me how grand she was.” 

“She’s grand enough, doubtless.” His mother deflected 
his counter-thrust with a shaking of her head. “It’s the 
way her and Evanturel carry on.” 

In spite of himself, his smile burned out. 

She must have observed it instantly. “The rest of the 
show’s moved over to Allandale already, but he’s still 
hangin’ around. Minnie said she heard he was trvin’ to 
get the girl to elope with him.” She launched her supreme 
bit of invective: “He’s a pucey young fellow—ay?” 

With an unexpected movement, McNicol reached down 
and picked the photograph album from the floor. 

“I doubt I’ll be settin’ up when you come in,” his 
mother said, in pleased accents. 

He turned to kiss her. 

This was, to all intents, their farewell; in the morning 
the children would be on hand and there could be no 
privity of emotion. He was embarking, for how long 



HE PRESENTS THE ALBUM 


95 


neither could guess—to his death, possibly; though she 
still believed he would enlist as a doctor. They had been 
together six short days—days replete with anxiety and 
shame—and she had counted on having him there with 
her the rest of her life. 

She did not tremble in his arms. No suspicion of mois¬ 
ture glazed her eyes. She accepted his abrupt change of 
plans stoically, matter-of-factly, perhaps phlegmatically. 

All she said was, “Best take your overcoat.” 

Here was a woman! 

He was devoutly glad she should never be aware he 
knew. 


ii 

To reach the rope ferry he must pass directly by the 
Onweller cottage. A light burned behind the blinds—with 
a quality of expectancy. 

“Time enough,” he assured himself. 

The skiff was on the opposite shore. He found he 
could not pull it across; the rope in some way was caught. 
All the more determinedly, he made his way along the mill 
wharf, then with great caution stepped upon the ridge of 
huge boulders that formed the dam. 

Halfway across, groping in the darkness, he slipped. 
Both legs splashed into the fast-flowing water; he was 
all but swept into the stream. Cursing silently, he drew 
himself up on the dam once more, and crept the remaining 
distance. He had kept the album dry. 

He would just find out about this elopement business. 

That odd poplar grove received him into its mysterious 
shadows. The several lights from the great manor house 
gleamed quaintly through the branchless tree trunks. He 
sensed the blowing of the wind, the scudding of clouds 
across the starlit sky. But within the grove the darkness 
was suffocating. 




g6 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol reconnoitered with extreme discretion. Per¬ 
haps on the other side of each thick tree, he would come 
suddenly upon the two—the girl he had sworn to marry, 
and Evanturel. Perhaps, even now, they w T ere stealing 
off together in some other quarter of the grove, unde¬ 
tected, and he was too late. His wet trousers clung to 
his legs clammily. 

As he came closer he observed that some of the windows 
had not been screened. The lamps within threw a vague 
illumination out into the area directly in front of the 
house. 

McNicol, with a sudden physical shock, stopped. Ap¬ 
proaching the house from another angle, he had descried 
a second prowler. He had an instinct to dodge behind 
a tree, then perceived he had already been discovered. 
The illumination did not suffice to reveal the other’s fea¬ 
tures, but he was, quite unmistakably, Evanturel. 

Come to abduct his, McNicol’s, chosen wife! 

Instantly he dropped the photograph album and rushed 
forward, had time to get home to his rival’s face two 
smashing blows each with a full shoulder behind it. 

With a cry of terror the pucey one managed to extricate 
himself and departed with unbelievable speed. McNicol, 
pursuing like a mad bull, ran full tilt into a poplar tree, 
sat down abruptly. 

Presently, as he remained on the ground, rubbing his 
tingling scalp, he became aware of a familiar and pleas¬ 
antly significant sound—the creaking of the iron pulleys 
of the rope ferry. 

There would be no elopement this night! 

Halfway to his feet, he became conscious a lamp was 
being lighted in one of the second-story rooms. 

Her bedroom. In a year, perhaps —their bedroom. 

Some one was moving about in that shrine. He could 
see blurred silhouettes on the ceiling and wall. She! Shift 


HE PRESENTS THE ALBUM 


97 

about, twist his neck as he would, he could not envisage 
her. He started climbing a tree trunk. 

Then the occupant of the room came to the window— 
stood gazing up at the heavens raptly. And it was only 
his patient—the young child, Lessie Gough. 

The mute aspiration of her posture did not touch him. 
The object of his adoring quest must be still downstairs, 
then. He circled to the right, hoping to catch one last 
blessed glimpse of her. 

The soldier’s final silent leave-taking. The romantic 
aspects of the situation came fervidly to him. 

If she could know! If he could but draw her out to 
him by the very force of his longing! It seemed to him 
he must see her again, must let her know, somehow, he 
worshiped her. 

She might marry some one else while he was away, 
fighting—without ever realizing he cared. 

He stopped again. Some one was coming, actually, out 
on the porch. As the figure passed through a shaft of 
light he recognized her. 

She stood perfectly immobile. He was not fifty feet 
from her. This was his God-given opportunity. Should 
he fail? 

Just then he was aware of an afterthought, acutely 
painful. Perhaps she was waiting for Evanturel! 

While he wrestled with his jealousy she quickly went 
within. 

“You fool!” he berated his indecision. 

As he wandered, disconsolate, his foot struck something 
—the photograph album. He stared down at it, and a 
sudden determination came to him. 

He had been perfectly clear, all along, that he meant 
eventually to get to Minnie Onweller’s house and give her 
the album. He had bought it for her, and it was only 
right she should have it. Later—when he was miles 



g8 the red-blood 

away—he would write her and explain his change of heart. 

But now he rapidly inscribed another name on the paper 
wrapping, stole up the front steps of the Gough mansion, 
deposited the album on the doorsill, vigorously plied the 
knocker, and flitted back into the night. 

It was James Gough, he thought, who answered the 
summons, stood scrutinizing the package curiously an 
instant, then closed the door. 

“She’ll never know.” 

And he remained subtly comforted, even though a few 
moments later he saw the light still burning behind the 
Onweller blinds, patiently, expectantly. 

hi 

The kitchen lamp in his own home had not been 
extinguished, either. He climbed the driveway gate noise¬ 
lessly, planning to enter by the back door. Doubtless his 
mother had sanctioned the extravagance lest his stum¬ 
blings in the dark interior awaken them all. 

But as he came to the kitchen window he saw she was 
still up. Sitting torpidly in one of the bare wooden chairs 
near the lamp, her face toward him; he could remark 
distinctly its every lineament. She was reading some¬ 
thing, with a slight strabismic frown. 

McNicol came a step closer, to confirm his shocked per¬ 
ception. The sheets in her fingers were the two letters 
she had sent to Suny Grizard. 

He could not believe the fact, so lethargic her scrutiny. 
A thread of irritation unraveled in his brain. 

“That’s what she gets for snooping. Serves her right.” 

But he retraced his steps cautiously and entered the 
front door with elaborate banging, that she might have 
sufficient warning. 

It amazed him that she had not changed her posture 


HE PRESENTS THE ALBUM 


99 

ever so slightly. Her calm glance rested on her son’s 
bruised forehead. 

“And what’s this you’ve been doin’ t’ yoursel’?” 
Automatically he rubbed the swollen area, staring at 
the letters. 

“When I come t’ pack your shirt in the grip, th^se got 
pulled out somehow,” she explained, with steadfast, un¬ 
ashamed gray eyes. “I could tell, anyway, you’d found 
out.” She gave the letters to him. “Put them back. 
Let sleepin’ dugs lie.” 

As he received them and started silently toward the 
bedroom, she noted the disappearance of the photograph 
album. 

“Well—and was Minnie likin’ your present?” 


CHAPTER XII 


EMBARKATION 

I 

B EFORE proceeding to the brink of the escarpment 
he detoured to the family lot and stood for a moment 
within the shelter, surveying the marker at the foot of 
the mustard-colored mound of earth, laden with spring 
flowers still unwithered. 

McNicol stooped. Yes, the stone mason had already 
come and gone. 

FATHER 

1820-1863 

This last freshly graven date roused no emotion in 
him; he was interested chiefly in assuring himself the 
work had been capably done. His eyes drifted—fell 
upon the hemlock trunk, its spiral scar already maculated 
with weather stains; and in a flash he was back in the 
thunderstorm, witnessing the tree’s electrocution, feeling 
his cap wet on his brow, wondering about that bauble of 
a handkerchief. 

He resurrected it now, pressed it sentimentally to his 
lips, inhaled its faint perfume. 

A sharp recollection of more practical exigencies pres¬ 
ently drew his watch forth; he must watch the time. But 
as he prepared to leave the shelter, the snapping of a 

broken branch drew his attention alertly toward the road. 

100 

e, 

( * 

i 


EMBARKATION ioi 

A girl, quite alone, was approaching him rapidly along 
the path. 

McNicol dodged behind the two intertwining pine trees, 
his heart beating fast. For though the brim of her flat 
Leghorn hat concealed her features, he had recognized her 
at once. No other woman in Wellington County would 
be walking alone in a cemetery at this hour of the morn¬ 
ing, and so delicately, so radiantly attired. She wore 
boots, he could see, under her short flaring petticoat of 
dark blue, and a close-fitting jacket of pearl gray. As 
she came nearer, then passed by, he caught the glint of 
the sunlight upon the sequins of her velvet hand bag, 
took note of the folds of the camel’s-hair shawl embracing 
her lovely neck and dark-brown ringlets. 

Should he go forth, seize hold on the miracle, or stay 
miserably, supinely inert? Easy enough, later, to tell 
himself he would have been brave; the girl, however, had 
suddenly stopped, with a startled movement; she was 
turning toward him; she saw him. 

“Oh! I was afraid-” 

He came out of the shelter, compressing the handker¬ 
chief into his fist, doffing his cloth cap. 

Miss Jenny Gough’s vivid gaze enthralled him. She 
was superb—a goddess—with a lavish, opulent beauty. 
Not beauty, exactly. Certainly not fragile prettiness. 
Handsomeness—that was it. Vigorous, colorful, full¬ 
blown handsomeness. 

But what was this incredible thing she was saying? 

“Oh, I was afraid I’d been too late. You see, your 
mother told me I might find you here if I hurried.” 

What! This divine creature pursuing him! 

“You mean you wanted to see me?” he faltered in¬ 
credulously. 

“Yes—before you went. I felt I had to thank you for 
that beautiful album.” 




102 


THE RED-BLOOD 


His servile lower jaw would drop. “How-” 

“I knew/’ she answered mysteriously. Her warm 
smile had an ingredient of coquetry. “I thought it was 
intended for some one else.” 

Confound this provincial gabbling! His own grin was 
sheepish. Some outlying preoccupation presaged an 
unpleasant episode, one day, with Miss Minnie Onweller. 

“I’m sorry you’re going,” she said presently. 

He had an instinct to disclaim any heroism of motive. 
He almost told her, “Nobody can expect to amount to 
much in the States who hasn’t a war record.” He might, 
in his pride of shrewdness, even have told her of the 
bounty. But some small residue of perceptiveness kept 
him silent; he discerned a more idealistic mood in her. 

“My duty,” he blurted. 

Her eyes acclaimed him. “How wonderful! What a 
glorious chance for a physician!” 

He saw a further opportunity to impress her. “I’m 
not going as a doctor. I shall enlist as a soldier—to 
fight.” 

He hoped she wouldn’t tell his mother. 

“Oh, I wish—” She stopped. 

But he sensed her meaning. “This handkerchief of 
yours—” He extended it humbly; then, to save her dis¬ 
tress, lied chivalrously: “I just found it here. Won’t 
you let me keep it?” 

The incident was surely romantic. Jenny Gough gave 
a little sigh of bliss, and, as a queen to her paladin, con¬ 
ferred the lacy favor. 

McNicol instinctively craved reassurance on one point. 

“I’m hoping you’ll still be here when—” He did not 
have to finish the period. 

She did not answer directly. Instead she gave him her 
hand; he knelt and kissed it. 



EMBARKATION 


103 

“Do something fine!” she bequeathed. “Do something 
beautiful!” 


11 

Curiously enough, the last impression he had was of the 
tiny holes pierced in the lobes of her delicately fashioned 
ears. Curiously, too, these minute puncturings elevated 
her in his eyes, made her that much more desirable of 
acquisition. She was above him, beyond him, now—a 
goal to measure his strength, a possible trophy for his 
unconquerable wilJ-to-power. 

She had disappeared, and he looked masterfully from 
the escarpment out across the valley, past the Conestoga 
and the bleak little town huddled into the rise of ground, 
to the free scope and sweep of the sun-freshened hills, 
and on the northern horizon the bold contour of Mount 
Judah. 

“Yes, I’ll marry her ” he said, breathing deep—the 
panorama, as ever, distilling broad resolves within him. 

“And I’ll make money ” He thrust his head perceptibly 
forward on his thick neck. 

“And be a great man.” 

He wheeled abruptly; and after a second glance at his 
watch began running back along the path toward the 
Drayton post road, where the mail coach was to pick 
him up. 



BOOK TWO: MARRIAGE 



BOOK TWO: MARRIAGE 

CHAPTER I 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


I 


AWAKENING abruptly about six o’clock, McNicol had 



^ bounded to his feet and was standing in the middle of 
the small bedroom, before his slowly clearing conscious¬ 
ness reminded him of three unique circumstances: that he 
had spent the night at the Drayton Western Star; that it 
was Sunday morning; that the hotel dining room would 
not be open for another hour. 

He found he was staring stupidly at a large framed 
engraving suspended on the wall over the side of his bed. 
A faint prick of curiosity impinged; he went a step nearer 
and read the indistinct title characters: “King William 
Crossing the Boyne.” Thence his glance descended to the 
inviting folds of the feather mattress. He had not slept 
so luxuriously since leaving Cartwright, twenty-six long 
months ago. His initial impulse was to go back to bed, 
but even as he stood debating he became aware of the 
first shafts of the morning sun slanting horizontally 
across the room upon the heroic figure of King William. 
Promptly his instinct for activity possessed him; he 
turned without further questioning from the bedstead 
toward the room’s solitary window. 

Beyond the ugliness of the brick and frame buildings 
that lay east of the Western Star slowly emerged the 
majestic slope of green Ontario hills. Suddenly the air 
in the little bedroom seemed intolerably close; he 


io8 


THE RED-BLOOD 


wrenched the astonished window open, and leaning out a 
little, tasted the peculiar piquant freshness of the air; 
something of its familiar pioneer flavor reached his slow 
sensibilities; he was indefinably stirred, reenforced. 

McNicol, to be sure, was not one to moon rapturously 
at any landscape, however lovely. Swiftly the panorama 
became for him but an appropriate background for his 
own triumphant return from the war; he measured him¬ 
self against the Canadian hills and sensed his own strength 
and maturity. The picture returned of himself, standing 
on the limestone escarpment at Cartwright that April 
morning, more than two years ago; and he almost smiled, 
so pathetically callow and unfledged did his younger self 
now appear. 

He turned quickly away from the window, already 
obsessed with the necessity of doing something. Over the 
back of a chair hung the coat of his officer’s uniform; 
he picked it up with sudden pride. The uniform was 
quite new; he had obtained it after his discharge from 
Andersonville prison. And highly becoming. In it he 
recognized himself a handsome presence. But more than 
this, the uniform betokened solid achievement: in 
twenty-four months of service he had become a captain. 

“Another year—and I’d have been a general,” he 
assured himself, with acute regret. 

Half dressed, he stepped to the washbasin and began 
shaving in front of the square flyblown mirror, meanwhile 
surveying himself with the solemn stare of one celebrating 
high ritual. The sharp razor blade retreated downward 
from his long sideburns—he wondered, inadvertently, 
whether he ought not to grow a mustache—and started 
traveling over his chin with a slight scraping sound; all 
at once it seemed to skid slightly, and he gave an 
exclamation of pain. The white lather under his lower 
lip became suffused with red. 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


109 

“Damnation!” McNicol washed away the lather 
impatiently. Blood coursed down his chin from the 
incision. He had forgotten to avoid the jagged rifle-bullet 
scar that mutilated the right corner of his lower lip and 
sagged diagonally down across the front of his jaw, almost 
like a second grotesque mouth. The flaps of the wound 
had never healed smoothly; unless he used extreme pains 
in shaving, he was certain to send his razor into the tender 
scar tissue. 

Even after the flow of blood slackened and he had 
finished shaving, his resentment continued to smolder. 
He reexamined the scar. Always until now he had been 
rather proud of it—his soldier’s credentials, a scarlet 
chevron of valor. But now he found himself regarding 
it as a blemish—wondering what Jenny Gough, for 
example, might make of it. For however lightly he held 
that more youthful McNicol of two years ago, he still 
cherished with grim determination those same three 
resolves; and it was, in fact, for the express purpose of 
affiancing Miss Gough that he had hastened from Detroit 
immediately after his discharge from the army. 

He glared at the scar a moment more, revolving in his 
mind the feasibility of growing an Imperial to conceal 
its distorting contour. 


11 

When McNicol, after a brief excursion, returned to 
the Western Star, shortly before seven o’clock, he found 
a blowsy, collarless youth yawning behind the hotel desk. 

“Look here, son,” he accosted, “what time does the 
livery stable open?” 

The clerk, still enveloped in an aura of sleep, stared 
stupidly at McNicol. 

“Livery stable?” His voice was catarrhal, as if his 


no 


THE RED-BLOOD 


large nose was completely stopped up. “Why, this is 
Sunday, mister. Can’t get no rig on Sunday, y’ know.” 

McNicol blinked. He had forgotten the inviolability 
of the Canadian Sabbath. 

“But I’ve got to go to Cartwright,” he persisted, as 
though expecting his personal exigencies to move the inert 
mountains of tradition. 

“Can’t git no rig to-day,” reiterated the youth, stolidly, 
sensing the full moral support of convention. 

McNicol’s gray eyes glittered. He had an almost irre¬ 
sistible impulse to pound the desk with his fist and shout 
loud challenges to this gawky representative of local 
virtue. Yet he had the wit to perceive that not all the 
will power in the world could indent such inertia. His 
contempt became sardonically humorous; he remembered 
his role of the successful man of the world indulgently 
returning to his humble origin. 

“You people ought to wake up—get a move on,” he told 
the clerk. “How much do I owe you?” 

“Stayin’ for breakfast?” The boy found a pencil and 
prepared for difficult mathematical feats. “Twenty-five 
cents for sleepin’ and washin’ y’, and fifteen cents for 
eatin’ y’—that’s forty cents in all.” 

McNicol spun a coin on the desk, his good humor nearly 
restored. Forty cents! He reflected he would have had 
to pay twice that in a Detroit hotel. 

“I’ll leave my grips here—have the stage bring them 
over in the morning,” he condescended to the oscitant 
youth. 

The dining-room door was opened just then by a girl 
who might have been the clerk’s twin sister. McNicol 
entered and took a chair near the door. These people 
w^ere all alike, he assured himself: no quickness, no dash, 
no ambition; fully content to live precisely as had their 
fathers; convinced their own little corner of the w T orld 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


hi 


embraced all wisdom, all virtue—the people, indeed, espe¬ 
cially chosen of God and Queen Victoria. His own view¬ 
point had expanded enormously; he had traveled hun¬ 
dreds of miles; he had seen Abraham Lincoln and General 
Grant, face to face; frightful forms of death and human 
agony, the scorching intensity of battlefields, had hard¬ 
ened him into a grim and resourceful man; he had tested 
himself against people in the mass and grown stronger 
with each test. Already he was thinking of himself as 
a citizen of the United States, a resident of Detroit; these 
primitive backwoods Canadians seemed akin to vege¬ 
tables, with no quickening sense of progress to inspirit 
them. Yet in the States he was always the first to resent 
any slighting reference to his Canadian birth, to spring 
to the defense of these same unimaginative yokels as 
paragons of honesty and intelligence. 

The clerk’s twin sister appeared with his meal: two 
large fried pork chops, several sausages, fried potatoes, 
corn cakes, tea, and a piece of very pallid apple pie. 
McNicol smiled anew at the Ontario conception of break¬ 
fast; by now he had advanced to a preference for ham and 
eggs, and coffee; but he was hungry and not disposed to 
be fastidious. 

The waitress walked a few feet away, then wheeled and 
stood scrutinizing him, unabashed and determinedly help¬ 
ful. He could not reach for one of the elliptical side- 
dishes without being forestalled by her. As he plowed 
through toward completion, she swiftly descended, re¬ 
moved the glass cover from a plate of cheese, and tendered 
him an assortment of hard soda biscuit dotted here and 
there with what might have been dust specks. McNicol 
grunted his refusal; now that his appetite was satisfied, 
he remembered he must not take liberties with a stomach 
temporarily weakened by prison fare. 

The girl’s stare annoyed him. All at once her swarm 



112 


THE RED-BLOOD 


of freckles reminded him of Minnie Onweller, and he was 
immediately conscious of a slight uneasiness. What was 
Minnie likely to do? Had she heard about the photo¬ 
graph album? Would she make a scene—perhaps throw 
her arms about his neck and weep? His wished a little 
he had not come. Might it not be better to cross off his 
first great resolution? Even Jenny Gough seemed a little 
less desirable now, in his new scale of values. Perhaps, 
since he intended settling in Detroit, it would be cannier 
to marry some girl there—some one who could help him 
make a start. 

“You a soldier?” The waitress’s curiosity suddenly 
broke through her womanly reserve. 

Admiration from even a freckled girl is not ungrateful. 
McNicol nodded sternly. 

“From the States?” Then, before he could answer, 
“Which side you on?” 

In the midst of his astonishment, he threw out, “The 
North, of course.” 

She seemed distinctly disappointed, but forced herself 
to broadmindedness. “How much longer you thinkin’ it 
will last?” 

McNicol pushed back his chair and really gaped. Here 
it was the middle of June, and people in Drayton didn’t 
even know the war was over, probably hadn’t yet heard 
of President Lincoln’s assassination. A scant two hun¬ 
dred miles away, life still revolved all-inclusively about 
these cataclysmic facts; but here in the middle of 
Ontario, a so-called civilized community- 

Then something happened to bring him down out of 
his high indignation to more concrete concerns. Two men 
entered the dining room, glanced carelessly toward him, 
then proceeded to a table at the far end of the room. 

McNicol gave a start of recognition. The waitress’s 
precipitate desertion of him passed unnoticed. He had 



HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


n 3 

suddenly perceived that one of the newcomers was, quite 
beyond question, Professor Evanturel. 

All doubt of the singular and unexampled luster of 
Miss Jenny Gough whisked from his mind. He decided 
he must set out for Cartwright immediately. 


in 

When at length he reached the escarpment two hours 
later, and caught his first view of the town, he did not 
pause, as had been his custom. There was no time to be 
lost, he felt. Already the sun was high in a crystalline 
sky. His body was powdered with fine summer dust; he 
longed for a few minutes’ respite on the cemetery’s shaded 
grass; but he pressed on along the declivity’s brink, still 
driven by his fixed resolve to see Jenny Gough before 
Evanturel could overtake him. 

The clang of the bell in the truncated church tower 
pulsated across the valley to him. He could see black 
marionettes creeping toward the structure from both 
sides; his mother and some of the children he fancied he 
descried leaving the bleak blob of gray that was his home. 
But more intently he kept watch on the patch of poplars 
that almost smothered the square corners of the Gough 
house—hoping fervently that no woman’s figure might 
emerge. Perhaps, if his luck held good, he would find 
her there alone. 

Long before he reached the first outlying house the 
church bell had sent forth its final peremptory trio of 
sharp peals, and subsided. McNicol decided he would 
have a look at the congregation; if Jenny had not come, 
he would proceed directly to her house and bring matters 
to some decision before Evanturel’s arrival. 

The town’s familiar street came into view, every foot 
of it pregnant with some boyhood association. The faint 


THE RED-BLOOD 


114 

breeze reached his nostrils, fragrant and crisply warm 
from caressing the hills and trees he knew so intimately. 
But all unconscious of such gossamery nothings, McNicol 
came to the church and prepared to enter. 

There was no outer vestibule, he remembered; and 
it occurred to him that the front door had a permanent 
squeak. His ingress would attract attention; he could 
scarcely leave, once inside. Then he noted and recalled 
an outdoor staircase on one side of the edifice, giving 
access to a shallow rear gallery. He stole up the little- 
used steps. If the door at the top chanced to be 
unlocked- 

To his relief, it yielded noiselessly to his pressure. He 
peeped within. No more fortunate pass could have be¬ 
fallen: the minister was praying; all heads were bowed 
devoutly low over pew backs. McNicol edged his way 
in with extreme caution, succeeded in closing the door 
behind him without the faintest vestige of sound, and 
sat down on the gallery’s sole row of hard benches. Then 
he noted for the first time that he was not alone in the 
balcony; at the other end of the bench knelt an aged 
negro. 

Force of habit constrained McNicol to bow his own 
head for one moment. The Rev. Aubrey Cockburn, he 
at once recognized, had reached the final “we-thank- 
Thee” section of his prayer; the unctuous accents became 
ever more insistent. From various points of the boxlike 
interior arose fervent amens. McNicol was no atheist, 
certainly; if catechized, he would promptly have affirmed 
his belief in a jealous God. No, it was simply that more 
exigent things had pushed religion into the background; 
he never thought about it any more. Now, at any rate, 
he was becoming bored. 

An especially loud and quavering, “Amen,” breaking 
from the old negro, startled him into fresh recollection of 



HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


ii 5 

his quest. His eyes, raised discreetly, began probing rest¬ 
lessly among the suppliant worshipers below. Many of 
them he identified at once: Minnie Onweller, for example, 
kneeling next to her father’s burly figure. Her brick-red 
hair induced a slight shiver of aversion in him; he con¬ 
tinued to foresee difficult complications. Then, a little 
farther forward and to the right, his elder sister, Naomi, 
and his brother Glen. Spontaneously, his glance lifted 
to the chair stall, at the left of the pulpit. Yes, his 
mother w r as there, crouched down beside the diminutive 
reed organ; he could identify her black Orleans dress, 
the gibbous slope of her back. 

At the very moment of recognition the invocation 
ceased, and his mother quickly moved to the organ stool. 

“Let us all unite in singing hymn number Forty-six,” 
urged Reverend Cockburn as soon as he had found his 
feet. “Hymn number Forty-six: 

“From Greenland’s icy mountains, 

From India’s coral strand-” 

His eyes, traveling piously heavenward, paused full 
on McNicol—remained there a moment. The aged 
negro, too, was now scrutinizing him with curiosity. The 
returned warrior scowled a little; it did not at all suit 
his purpose to be recognized. To leave the gallery now 
would be difficult. He was glad the congregation faced 
the other way; only the minister and the choir could 
envisage the gallery. He heard Tom Boole’s corded bass 
voice, idly remarked Mrs. Sarah Fergus’s squat figure 
emitting contralto tones excessively stentorian; then, his 
gaze resting on the third member of the choir, he gulped 
abruptly. Of course! He remembered now his mother’s 
telling him about the fine soprano voice of Miss Jenny 
Gough 



n6 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Yes, there stood his future wife, sharing a hymn book 
with the dowdy Mrs. Fergus, the sun slanting in from 
the near-by window across her figure. Her voice, not so 
blatant as the others’, nevertheless stood out clear and 
musical; it was what people called a “trained voice”; she 
sang almost effortlessly, in contrast with the others’ mus¬ 
cular straining. But McNicol was scarcely aware of this. 
He hung inanimate upon the mere fact of her radiant 
presence; he could not have said what she wore, save that 
it was of some light-blue material—and so remarkably 
fresh-looking! All at once he wanted her to see him. He 
stood up straighter, moved a little, projected his desire 
toward her. But, perversely enough, she would not raise 
her glance from the hymnal. 

The congregation sat, and the Reverend Cockburn 
began his sermon with appropriate ponderousness. Still 
McNicol could not attract the attention of his divinity, nor 
even his mother’s. Now if he had been trying to remain 
unnoticed, they would have seen him instantly! The 
situation irked him; he had no appetite for the Reverend 
Cockburn’s terrifying pictures of hell fire; at any minute, 
too, Evanturel might himself enter the edifice. Yet there 
was no escape. At frequent intervals the minister would 
impale him with stern glances and earnest gestures—as 
if defying him to leave. 

Fans undulated through the humid air; more than one 
man, without relaxing at all his fixed probity of expres¬ 
sion, peeled off his coat. Small boys like Glen McNicol 
fell asleep. 

But for McNicol the hour’s ordeal was somewhat 
alleviated by the circumstance that he could look his fill 
at the girl in the choir stall. She was sitting between 
his mother and Mrs. Fergus; and he could not help notic¬ 
ing that whereas she sometimes exchanged whispers and 
smiles with the contralto, she gave no heed to Mrs. 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


117 

McNicol. Or was it that his mother covertly ignored 
Jenny? 

By this time McNicol’s first inner turmoil had given 
place to a more impersonal appraisal of the girl. She 
was as colorfully handsome as he had remembered her. 
Her brown and glossy hair, escaping a little the sides 
of her bonnet, framed perfectly her round, slightly tanned 
face. If her eyes had been less arresting in their dark 
vividness, perhaps the lower half of her face might have 
seemed weak. Her beauty, in spite of her youthfulness, 
had a quality of maturity, a certain exotic opulent strain. 

Even the Reverend Cockburn’s bony forehead glistened 
with perspiration now, as if he suffered in person the fiery 
torments he designed for unbelievers. The sermon 
became a test of endurance; each moment it seemed he 
must stop, 3^et he strove valiantly on and on. Modern 
laxity in religion and morals received his most stinging 
assaults. Children were no longer being reared, as had 
their parents, in proper reverence for the sacred things 
of life; the younger generation, unless promptly checked, 
would convert Canada into one vast sea of iniquity. And 
conditions in the States, he hinted—and seemed to look 
straight at McNicol—were inexpressibly more shocking; 
there, godlessness already ran rampant. 

Then all at once the incredible happened and the ser¬ 
mon ceased. An effluence of gratitude rose almost visibly 
from the tortured audience. All eyes turned expectantly 
toward the choir stall. Mrs. McNicol w^as already play¬ 
ing soft introductory measures from a page of sheet music. 
Quite without warning, Jenny Gough stood up and started 
her offertory solo. Her manner was diffident, almost 
meek, as if she wished to demonstrate to the Reverend 
Cockburn and to the worshipers that here was one mem¬ 
ber of the younger generation, at least, who had no traffic 
with modern sinfulness. McNicol could not fail to 


THE RED-BLOOD 


118 

notice the convergence of all interest upon the soloist. 
Fans stopped vibrating. Octogenarians listened with 
open mouths, their hands cupped to ears. Even the Rev. 
Aubrey Cockburn turned toward the music, perhaps to 
indicate he was a liberal-minded man and open to con¬ 
viction. 

The song Jenny sang was full of a sweet and plaintive 
sadness; many of the women applied pocket kerchiefs to 
their eyes. McNicol himself felt tremendously moved. 
His neighbor, the ancient negro, must have been similarly 
affected; for all at once, just before the end of the solo, 
he emitted a loud and agitated, “Amen.” So loud, in fact, 
that Jenny Gough looked up into the gallery, startled, for 
the first time that morning; and her eyes darted ques- 
tioningly from the old negro across to where McNicol sat 
enthralled. 

“By George!” he mumbled. 

The soloist regained her aplomb only with visible effort, 
completed the song a bit uncertainly, and resumed her 
seat. 

She had recognized him. Always her glance returned 
to the gallery, yet McNicol could not construe her 
expression as delighted. Surprised, she naturally would 
be; but why did she appear so uneasy, so apprehensive? 

He saw her whisper briefly to his mother. Mrs. Mc¬ 
Nicol looked quickly up at him, and her deeply felt joy 
made Jenny’s perturbation the more distinct. 

A brief final supplication from the Reverend Cockburn 
and the service was over. 

McNicol gathered himself together for incisive action. 
He decided he would meet his mother at the door below, 
then, upon Jenny Gough’s appearance, detach himself as 
unobtrusively as possible and accompany her home. Al¬ 
ready, doubtless, Evanturel was somewhere in town. 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


119 

Mrs. McNicol was waiting for him when he descended 
the steep gallery staircase. 

“Well, ma,” he said, and kissed her awkwardly. 

In spite of his preoccupation, he noted that she was 
older. Her hair was almost white, and her face and neck 
much more emaciated; her neck, especially. Its thick 
superficial muscles stood out perceptibly from the loose 
folds of skin. And even as he watched the church door, 
he did not wholly miss the infinite fondness in the pose 
of her head, turned up toward him sidewise. 

Then, with surprising celerity, he found himself sur¬ 
rounded by familiar faces—people he had known all his 
life. From their midst appeared the old negro, whom he 
had never seen till this morning. 

“Capt’n McNicol?” the negro quavered. 

The hero nodded shortly and kept his eyes upon the 
entrance doorway, against the coming of Jenny Gough. 

All at once he became aware that the old negro had 
knelt before him and was fervently kissing his hand. 

“Was a slave once,” he heard his mother explain. 

McNicol was irritated, and not a little embarrassed. 
The negro wept abundantly; but there was something 
vaguely theatric in his demeanor, as if he secretly enjoyed 
these large gestures of grateful humility, savored to the 
full his conspicuousness. McNicoPs distaste had its 
ingredient, too, of wonderment: he had not fought to 
free the slaves; he wasn’t so sure, to tell the truth, that 
slavery didn’t have its uses. No, he had played his 
warrior’s part, not from deep-seated principles, not be¬ 
cause really he gave a fig whether the South seceded or 
not, but for the very simple reason that the war meant 
opportunity—the strong man’s chance to rise a little from 
the rubble. 

Still, such vague, scarcely formulated concepts are not 
for publication. Both he and this gibbering old fool at 


120 


THE RED-BLOOD 


his feet were hypocritical enough, no doubt—but let the 
show go on! This hero effect was exactly the role he had 
wanted to play. He could, in fact, imagine no more fitting 
tableau to impress Jenny Gough—if she would only come 
out now! 

But instead, he beheld Minnie Onweller on the door¬ 
step. McNicol stiffened. He had a shadowy presenti¬ 
ment his herohood was to be short lived. Would she 
ignore him, or berate him to his face, perhaps? No, surely 
not—yet you never could tell what these red-headed 
Scotch women might do. 

But Minnie, after an instant of bewilderment, came 
straight toward him; greeted him kindly, quite without 
rancor. He could detect no knowing smirks on the faces 
around him. Was it possible, after all, that the romantic 
history of the picture album was unknown? Did Minnie 
Onweller still deceive herself with hopes in his quarter? 
Certainly her one-time air of proprietorship over him was 
lacking, and in its place a certain distant quality, a com¬ 
plete loss of interest in him, and a something about her 
smile that betokened forgiveness. Or wasn’t it more 
like condescension? 

Minnie did not linger. People began moving on. The 
decrepit negro, sensing the loss of his audience, clambered 
to his feet and tottered off. The Reverend Cockbum 
appeared at the church entrance and locked the door. He, 
too, shook hands, sadly, clammily, and passed onward. 
Only Mrs. McNicol remained, and the two children. 

But where was the unparallelel Miss Jenny Gough? He 
could take his oath she had not yet emerged. 

“We’ll be startin’, ay?” said his mother, turning toward 
the road. 

McNicol bit his lip, chose the lesser disadvantage of 
specific inquiry: “Where’d she go?” 

His mother looked back over her shoulder. “Why, 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


12 I 


didn’t you see that big, fine-lookin’ man she was with?” 
Then, “That’s her husband.” 

“Her husband!” 

“Didn’t I write you? Oh yes, you waited too long, 
Denny. She got a fine man, Minnie did.” 

Young Naomi—not so young, either, any more—cleared 
things up. “Oh, he don’t mean Minnie, ma.” Her grin 
was very knowing. “He wants to know about Jenny— 
and I can tell him. She went out by the back way. I 
saw her.” 

McNicol frowned. The thing was too much for him. 
Did his divinity really choose to avoid him? 

He compelled himself to ask, “She isn’t married, too?” 

His mother laughed a little. “No, but she might as 
well be. Might better be, I say. She’s engaged, any¬ 
how—to that Evanturel. He just left here last night.” 

IV 

“But what are you going to do, Denny?” asked Dr. 
Amos Milk, endeavoring unsuccessfully to conceal his 
vast relief. 

McNicol kept his eyes away from his mother. “Go into 
business in Detroit,” he said. 

“Well, the practice of medicine is a hard life,” said 
the venerable physician, virtuously. He presented a frow¬ 
sier picture than ever; he had seemingly given his white 
whiskers carte blanche; they now grew down over his 
shirtfront; and his eyes and enormous jointed nose pro¬ 
jected almost timorously from veritable thickets of tangled 
hair. “But what I say is, too bad you’re going to waste all 
that education—all that experience in the army.” 

Then his mother spoke: “Denny wasn’t a doctor in the 
army. He was a soldier.” 

Another surprise in this day of unexpected things. 


122 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol turned quickly toward her, wondering how she 
had learned his secret. 

“Knew it all the time,” she rejoined. 

If she was enduring torments of disappointment at the 
news of his departure, she gave no unequivocal sign. But 
her mouth seemed a little more set than usual, and her 
eyes had a lusterless far-away look. 

“Ma’s coming to Detroit with me,” he said to Doctor 
Milk. 

Mrs. McNicol did not take the trouble to deny so 
transparent an untruth, but her lips curved into a quiv¬ 
ering smile. Her son saw all at once that she was an old 
woman. 

“He must do what he thinks best,” she confided to the 
opposite wall. 

“It’s this way, Doctor,” McNicol quickly justified. 
“Being a physician doesn’t appeal to me any more, and I’d 
never be content here. The States—that’s where the 
big opportunities are. A man can make money there fast. 
And as to wasting my medical education, I’m not so sure. 
Perhaps I can find some business where it ’ll come in 
handy.” 

“If I went anywhere, it’d be back to the old country,” 
said Milk, sagely, pumping the words through his frayed 
vocal cords. 

“The old country!” McNicol derided. “What do I 
want with the old country? No, it’s the States. That’s 
the place for young fellows, I’m telling you. I like the 
way they do things over there. Some ginger, some hustle.” 

“Them Yanks are no good, Denny. Sharpers, every 
one of them! Dishonest, that’s what!” 

McNicol laughed. He felt very tolerant, very wise. 
“Well, anyway, they’re not asleep. Don’t catch them 
missing any tricks. People here in Cartwright didn’t even 
have enough brains to get the railroad to come through. 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 123 

I’ll wager, fifty years from now, there won’t be any town 
here at all.” 

Doctor Milk stood up hastily, his local pride mortally 
wounded. 

“Say good day t’ you,” he wheezed angrily, then 
stamped out to his waiting buggy. 

McNicol’s boisterous laughter quickly died away to the 
realization of graver things. He dreaded being alone with 
his mother’s stoical disappointment, and felt a lift of 
relief when she silently departed into the kitchen. Out¬ 
doors, it was almost dark; the children, except Naomi, 
w r ere already in bed. The time was at hand for his pre¬ 
meditated coup, yet he could not set forth until he had 
questioned his mother further. 

He found her sitting in a rocker, her gaze through the 
window fatalistic. 

“Ma, there’s something I got to ask you. What did 
you mean this morning—about Jenny Gough?” 

Mrs. McNicoi surveyed the empty back yard. 

“Jenny’s going to marry Ed Evanturel—that pucey 
fellow.” 

“But you said-” 

Her interruption was sharp. “And she better get mar¬ 
ried, I’m thinkin’, after all the skylarkin’ they been up to.” 

“Skylarking! ” 

“Out walkin’ alone with him at night. Folks have 
seen ’em.” 

He considered the point. “How long’s this been going 
on, ma?” 

“All this spring. Mrs. Onweller says he started writing 
to her from Toronto last April. Then all at once he 
begun cornin’ t’ see her.” 

“What’s Evanturel doing now—still running that show 
of his?” 

She shook her head. “Puts up medicines, just like he 



124 


THE RED-BLOOD 


did before; but has other people sell ’em. And Mrs. On- 
weller heard he was a gambler and a drinker, too. I 
don’t know. Some folks say Mr. Gough don’t like the lay 
o’ things, but he’s meek as molasses; the girl rides right 
over him. Headstrong. Wants her own way.” 

McNicol was silent, yet he was whispering to him¬ 
self: “Does, ay? Well, we’ll soon settle that.” 

“Mr. Gough told Reverend Cockburn there was always 
one girl like Jenny in every generation of his family,” 
Mrs. McNicol explicated. “Good-looking, all the men 
crazy about her—but no sense. Just weak and foolish. 
Each girl like that, he said, had an unhappy marriage; 
couldn’t pick the right man; just took the first one that 
did any fussin’ over her. And Jenny, with no mother t’ 
watch over her, is the worst one of all, I’m thinkin’.” 
For the first time she looked directly at him. “You’ll 
not be wastin’ any pains on her, Denny?” 

Her anile prejudices had not in the slightest swayed 
him. “Pshaw, ma—all the girl needs is some one to tell 
her her own mind.” 

“And you’re thinkin’ all the while Denny McNicol’s 
the man t’ do that?” She twitched impatiently. “I’ll 
tell y’ this much: Jenny Gough was boastin’ all over town 
about how Denny McNicol had give her a photograph 
album and asked her to wait for him.” 

He frowned at this. 

“What’s more,” said his mother, “she told everybody 
she’d never have y’. She wouldn’t marry a man who had 
no romance to him. That’s why she likes that Evanturel 
fellow.” 

If Mrs. McNicol thought thus to dissuade her son, she 
betrayed an incredible lack of understanding of his fiber. 
If she had urged him on toward the charms of Miss Jenny 
Gough, pointed out to him the manifest advantages of 
such a match, he might imaginably have cooled—just to 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


125 


show he had a will of his own. But now his mind was 
made up. He’d show people whether he was a laughing¬ 
stock. He’d show Jenny Gough what man could master 
her willfulness. Just now he had no consuming love for 
her, no undying affection; his quest had become solely a 
test of strength. 

They heard the front door open, and Naomi appeared. 

“Why, ma, what you doing, sitting here in the dark 
like this?” Her first youthful instinct was to light every 
lamp in the house. 

McNicol watched her without interest. To him she 
was still a child, in spite of her sixteen years. On the 
pretext of helping her, he moved away from his mother. 

Naomi replaced a lamp shade. “Oh, Denny—and have 
your ears been burning hot?” she suddenly demanded. 

“Why?” 

“I’ve just been across at the Goughs’ house, talking to 
Lessie; and she’s been sayin’ how grand you look in your 
uniform.” 

He stared blankly at his sister’s plump face. “At the 
Goughs’ house?” That was all that mattered. “And who 
else was there?” 

“Just Mr. Gough.” She saw her opportunity to tease 
him. “Your sweetheart, I’m thinking, must be gone to 
Drayton.” 

McNicol did not smile. When, a moment later, Naomi 
started chattering to her mother of the latest glories of 
the Gough menage, he tiptoed stealthily through the 
empty parlor toward the front door. 

v 

Descending the front porch steps, he had unaccountably 
tripped and gone stumbling at full length upon the stony 
road; and now, mounting the far side of the river bank, 


126 THE RED-BLOOD 

he lost his footing a second time and fell skidding down 
the incline. 

Perhaps, had he been an older, wiser man, equipped 
with sensitive mental antennae, these last adversities might 
have given him pause. The whole drift of some obscure 
fate seemed in opposition to his present enterprise. First, 
the look of apprehension on Jenny Gough’s face when she 
saw him in church—and her furtive escape. Next, the 
news of her engagement. Corroboratingly, the public 
announcements she would never marry him. Her open 
ridicule of him. And now, the circumstance she was not 
at home. Finally, these two ignominious sprawlings to 
earth, as if his destiny, discouraged with subtler warnings, 
meant to hold him back by crude physical force. 

In point of fact, however, such an interpretation did 
not even occur to him. He scrambled up the river bank, 
trampling down the loose detritus as he would have some 
antagonist; brushed the sand from his trousers knees and 
lacerated palms; and walked rapidly forward to the rim 
of the poplar grove—the labyrinth within whose convolu¬ 
tions he meant to come to grips with whatever and who¬ 
ever defied him. 

So intense, so forward looking was his temper, he did 
not smile even grimly as he came to the spot where two 
years before he had put to rout his persistent and more 
successful rival. To-night he was in no mood for mere 
reconnoitering; he proceeded straightway, with unmuffled 
tread, up the steps and pulled at the knocker resolutely. 

At once he caught the faint sound of movement within; 
the door swung back, and the benevolent lineaments of 
James Gough became visible. 

He peered out into the darkness, squinting a little, 
and raising his reading spectacles. 

“Well, Doctor McNicol! Come in.” 

There was no one else in the big sitting room, though 


HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


127 

from some adjoining chamber came the strains of an 
organ. 

The mill owner’s mild, kindly features confirmed his 
hospitable intent. “Glad to see you. Heard you were 
home.” He folded his newspaper and gestured with it 
toward a chair. “Want to hear all about the war. A 
captain, ay?” 

Here was the one man in Cartwright who read a Toronto 
daily paper, who had revealed even a tepid interest in the 
major happenings of the outside world. McNicol felt a 
warm current of reassurance. 

But he did not sit down, nor relax at all his inclemency 
of mien. He meant to carry things off with a high hand, 
to ride rough shod. Raising his voice a little to pene¬ 
trate Mr. Gough’s deafness, he demanded: 

“Your daughter Jenny—is she here?” 

Unprepared for his guest’s inexorable tone, James 
Gough nevertheless replied, surprisingly: “Jenny? I be¬ 
lieve she is. . . . Shall I call her?” 

McNicol nodded. 

Mr. Gough puckered the pleats of his mouth depre- 
catingly and stepped toward a rear door. 

“Just one moment,” deterred his visitor. “Is your 
daughter engaged to any one else?” 

The mill owner gazed his frank astonishment. “Bless 
my soul, young man, not that I know of! I hope not!” 

McNicol bowed a little. He fancied he could descry a 
faint twinkle in the older man’s shrewd little eyes. 

“And please come back here with your daughter.” 

Quite meekly, James Gough was gone. 

McNicol took a turn around the room, holding a tight 
rein on his satisfaction. Things were not so bad as he 
had thought: Jenny was at home; Jenny was not engaged 
—not professedly engaged—to Evanturel. He wondered 


128 


THE RED-BLOOD 


a little if his mother hadn’t invented that story of a 
betrothal, just to discourage him. 

The reed organ continued its plaintive sighing. Some 
one—perhaps the girl Lessie, his mother’s pupil—was 
playing hymns. 

His eyes flitted about the parlor abstractedly and he 
was dimly aware it no longer seemed so richly magnificent. 
More wonderful rooms than this, by far, he had seen in 
profusion, and Brussels carpets twice as richly patterned. 

He found some unsuspected deep-laid scruple definitely 
stirred by the spectacle of the Bible on the center table— 
overlaid by two other books! He speculated what his 
mother would say to such sacrilege. His gaze rose by 
chance to a crayon enlargement of a woman’s face that 
hung on the wall beyond the table. Jenny’s mother, doubt¬ 
less. 

He heard a rustle behind him—discovered Jenny and 
her father in the room with him. 

The triangle they outlined seemed suddenly electric 
with intensity. Mr. Gough stood near the table, his con¬ 
tracted left hand tapping the wood lightly. Jenny had 
not ventured far from the rear door through which she 
had entered; she appeared ready for instant escape, an 
aura of hesitancy enveloping her. She and McNicol hung 
an instant on each other’s look; and he was not so obtuse 
as to miss a certain reluctance, a species of unwilling 
acquiescence, in her manner. She stood just beyond the 
circle of light from the table lamp—half shrouded, half 
revealed in the illumination refracted through its green 
shade. Her head she inclined forward a little; her dark 
eyes surveyed him from underneath her perfectly formed 
brows. 

For this vital crux, McNicol had thought out no pro¬ 
cedure. He had small aptitude for careful planning; 
whenever he did attempt to map out a definite campaign 



HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN 


129 

in all its details, he found his prearrangements hampered 
him, made him self-conscious. Yet, given an intense 
enough desire, he never had to hesitate in the emergency. 

Thus now, his instinct was for reaching out and taking 
what he wanted, boldly, by force. Instinct discharged 
into prompt action. He walked quickly toward Jenny, 
took her by the wrist, and wheeled upon her father 
defiantly. 

“Your daughter is to be my wife.” 

Nothing happened for a moment. 

Then James Gough coughed politely; and McNicol 
knew he had nothing to fear from Cartwright’s wealthiest 
citizen. In that cough were uncertainty, the desire to 
offend no one—even a vestige of relief. 

“He wants me to marry her,” thought McNicol. 

Then Mr. Gough interposed, “And what have you to 
say, my daughter?” 

The instant was at hand. What would she do—tell 
her father she loved some one else; oppose a will as strong 
as this insolent suitor’s; or, worst of all, perhaps laugh 
outright in his face? 

McNicol tightened his hold and drew her toward him, 
inexorably. Their eyes met; his dominated hers—and 
then all at once she started weeping. He put his arm 
about her and she no longer resisted. 

Jove! He had won. Nov/ that the issue was settled, 
the achievement suddenly seemed incredible. That was 
the way to manage women! Of her tears he took no cog¬ 
nizance; of his astounding triumph, only. 

He heard James Gough say: “Now that’s just the way 
it should be.” The pacifist seemed grateful there was to 
be no trouble. “I’m right glad to have a young man like 
you in the family.” 

They became conscious of the reed organ’s despondent 
notes. 



130 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“I’ll bring in Lessie.” Mr. Gough disappeared. 

Still Jenny would not look at him—a mute acknowl¬ 
edgment, McNicol thought, of complete submission. 

“A rich mams wife you’re going to be,” he told her, and 
patted her arm proudly, possessively; then whisked out 
the lace handkerchief she had bestowed upon him. “I’ve 
carried it with me every minute since that morning,” he 
said devoutly. “Kept the bullets away, I guess.” 

The master of the house returned with his younger 
daughter. “Your future brother-in-law,” he told her. 

The victorious McNicol, smiling indulgently down at 
Lessie Gough, was startled by the direct and intense look 
in her eyes. A look of radiant innocence, perhaps of 
youthful adoration, certainly of startled disappointment. 

He was puzzled, mysteriously thrilled, and somehow 
shaken in his glory of conquest. Then he checked him¬ 
self sharply. What, a mooning school girl throw him off 
his balance! 

He bent to kiss the cheek of his bride-elect. Jenny 
trembled a little. 

His mother, when he returned home at last, still sat 
passively in her kitchen rocking chair, her hands listlessly 
in her lap. And all she would say, when he told her of 
his splendid exploit, was: 

“What must be, must be.” 

From sheer desolation and fatigue, she tweaked her 
tufted eyebrows. 


CHAPTER II 


THE FOSS FAMILY 

I 

M cNICOL crossed Woodward Avenue, plowing 
through the snow that covered the cobblestone 
pavement, avoiding the jingling cutters that sped down 
the thoroughfare; then struck off briskly along Jefferson 
Avenue toward the Young Men’s Hall in the Biddle Block, 
where he was to meet Charley Foss. He would be two 
or three minutes late, he reckoned; but then, Foss was 
bound to be even later than he. 

A crippled soldier, still in uniform, accosted him: 
“Mister, could you give a fellow a dime?” The man’s 
face was gaunt and unshaven; his right trousers leg, 
empty, flapped about his crutch; he held out a grotesque 

, little tin cup. “Hon’bly wounded at Shiloh, sir-” 

McNicol passed on impatiently. The streets were 
crowded even now with soldiers out of work, some horribly 
maimed, some not at all, but every one of them begging. 
Lazy ruffians! Why couldn’t they go to work? Times 
\yere hard; but he had found work, and so could they. 

“They ought to be rounded up, the whole herd of ’em/ 7 
he muttered. 

What especially affronted him was the way these loafers 
had of exploiting their uniforms to get sympathy from 
people; just because they had been soldiers, most of them 



132 


THE RED-BLOOD 


involuntarily, they seemed to think the country ought to 
support them the rest of their days. Yet now, all at once, 
his emotions underwent a rapid readjustment: he was no 
longer an indignant civilian, but himself a rebuffed and 
footsore soldier trudging vainly from office to office. That 
had been a year ago last June, after his return from 
Canada—a young engaged man, full of resolution and 
the hope of quick success, determined to get married as 
soon as possible. He had not scorned wearing his cap¬ 
tain’s uniform those days; he cherished an unexpressed 
conviction, in fact, that he had but to reappear in Detroit, 
and an impressed and grateful community would shower 
its favors upon him. Then the disheartening reality: no 
work of any kind available; employers, some of them 
made rich by the war, surveying his uniform coldly, almost 
contemptuously, and turning him away with curt denials. 
He himself might conceivably have been one of these 
pitiful skeletons in blue—though he did not admit this to 
himself—if the Foss family had not found a job for him 
with old Rorick. 

What sort of a country was it, anyway, that asked you 
to—nay, made you—face sudden death or frightful muti¬ 
lation, then let you beg or starve for your pains? McNicol 
had a sudden vivid recollection of the stirring band music, 
the wildly cheering crowds, that had sent these soldiers, 
himself included, to the frightful, searing actualities of 
war. And now they walked the streets this cold December 
night—and proffered tin cups. 

A wave of emotional generosity came over him. He 
turned around, on an impulse to return to the one-legged 
soldier, give him a piece of silver. But just as quickly 
a cross-current of feeling cut athwart his magnanimous 
instinct; his face became its customary intent and rigid 
mask. Life was a fight; if these fellows were as tough- 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


i 33 


fibered as he, as indomitable, they too would succeed; 
otherwise they deserved to remain beggars. 

He hurried on toward the Young Men’s Hall. 

n 

To his surprise, he found Charley Foss already at the 
theater entrance, staring at the poster: 

TO-NIGHT! TO-NIGHT! 

The Eminent Tragedian 

MR. EDWIN BOOTH 

IN 

Wm. Shakespeare’s “Julius C-esar” 

Himself chronically unpunctual, Foss displayed some 
annoyance at McNicol’s slight tardiness. 

“Half past seven, I told you, Mac,” he said, aggrievedly. 
“Too late now, probably.” 

They started running toward the alley that led to the 
stage door, Charley Foss slightly ahead of McNicol. A 
curious pair of friends, antithetical in every respect: Foss 
shorter and much slighter of mold, less substantial phys¬ 
ically and mentally; but with a mind considerably quicker, 
a temperament more volatile, a keen and humorous per¬ 
ceptiveness McNicol could never hope to attain. Yet the 
underlying fact remained, in spite of superficial things— 
Charley Foss was unstable, McNicol strong. Tacitly, 
both had recognized it since their first acquaintance at 
Andersonville. Charley’s frail health could not endure 
the rigors of prison life; when McNicol’s parole had 
arrived and his name was called out in the open-air pen, 
it was Foss who had stepped forward—at the risk of 
possible death for both of them if the deception was dis- 


134 


THE RED-BLOOD 


covered—and left McNicol behind until the war’s end. 
After a beginning like that, there is little room left for 
dispute over fundamental superiorities. Charley Foss, 
indeed, openly worshiped his rescuer, however much he 
might joke him about his slow-moving stodginess; and 
McNicol admitted to himself a kind of condescending 
attachment to the rich lumberman’s son. 

In the middle of the dark alley, opposite the stage door, 
they almost collided with a carriage. From it had stepped 
the figure of a man, all at once sharply silhouetted in the 
light of the door he pushed open. Charley Foss gripped 
his friend’s arm. 

“Sneak in behind this other supe.” 

Before the stage door could swing shut they were inside. 
McNicol, in his clumsy agility, sent Charley stumbling 
against the stranger who had preceded them. 

“Look out!” cried Foss. 

McNicol, somewhat dazed by the sudden illumination, 
became aware they w T ere in the wings of the stage. He 
perceived the rough canvas of the curtain, singularly 
bleak-looking and blemished here and there by small 
black circles. In front of one of these, an undersized 
individual in shirt sleeves seemed to be peering through 
a peep-hole. Otherwise, the barren inclosure appeared 
deserted. 

The stranger had turned around and taken a step 
backward, as if fearing further assault from Charley Foss. 
But he was not angry; his large melancholy brown eyes 
surveyed them with mild surprise. 

“Look here,” said Foss. “Where is it we go, d’ you 
know?” The thin stranger shook his head, uncompre¬ 
hending. “I mean—us supers.” 

McNicol observed that the shirt-sleeved man had 
spied them and was approaching rapidly. 

“Here’s where we get the boot,” he thought. 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


i35 

But Shirt-sleeves was almost cringing in his obeisance. 

“Oh, you’re here, Mr. Booth!” 

It was Charley Foss’s turn to step back, in guilty con¬ 
fusion. McNicol, however, did not budge. For wealth, 
for business success, he might have given way; but not 
for one of these strutting actor fellows, no matter how 
much other folks might idolize hirn. Especially not for 
the brother of John Wilkes Booth! 

The tragedian, having acknowledged Shirt-sleeves’s 
devoirs with a nod, now spoke for the first time. 

“Sol, conduct these young gentlemen to the supers’ 
dressing room, if you please.” 

A weakling! McNicol’s scorn increased. If he had 
been Mr. Booth addressing two humble hangers-on, you 
could bet he’d not be so damned polite; he’d raise his 
voice and swear. 

But Charley was incomprehensible. “God! What a 
prince he is—and what a voice! I’d give my eye teeth 
if I could talk like that!” This in whispers, as they fol¬ 
lowed Sol down a rickety ladder into the basement. 

McNicol shook his head. Charley was a bit daft on 
some subjects; he would talk for days now about the 
episode, McNicol predicted—would boast of having 
spoken to Edwin Booth. 

“You friends of Mr. Booth’s?” inquired Sol, not quite 
certain of the proper tone to be used toward his charges. 

Foss nudged McNicol. “Know him well,” he said. 

They passed through a door and came abruptly upon 
fifteen or twenty men in various stages of becoming 
Roman citizens. Here was one youth with a tunic over 
his plaid trousers. Another, completely costumed, sat 
grimacing with upturned face and closed eyes, while a 
member of the regular troupe applied brownish-red grease 
paint with astonishing celerity. 

“Couple more, Harry,” Sol called out briefly. 


THE RED-BLOOD 


136 

The make-up man, with a practiced lateral motion, 
shifted the half-burnt cheroot from one end of his mouth 
to the other, and eyed the newcomers without enthu¬ 
siasm. 

“Kyn’t use ’em/’ he snapped. “Got a full crew.” 

Sol winked. “B. brought ’em. Told me to put 
them on.” 

He disappeared. Harry, the make-up man, looked very 
surly; his supreme authority as supe-master was not to 
be questioned lightly even by a great tragedian; but when 
he had finished with the youth before him, he rummaged 
among the heaped-up costumes and presently beckoned. 

“ ’Ere, put these on—and be quick abaht it.” 

The two friends sat down upon a bench and rapidly 
undressed. Charley Foss was in high spirits. 

“God! There’s luck for you!” he whispered jubi¬ 
lantly. 

McNicol, more phlegmatic, remained unimpassioned. 
The more he thought about it, in fact, the more he regret¬ 
ted having agreed to join in Charley’s silly project. What 
was the good, he pondered dourly, of wasting an evening 
in such nonsense, of capering about a stage as part of a 
Roman rabble? What did it profit him? Was this 
making money—becoming a successful business man? 
Did this sort of juvenile foolishness bring his marriage 
to Jenny Gough a single hour nearer? And he had sworn 
to her he would toil day and night till he had proved his 
mettle! Surely his path was proving impassable enough 
without this sort of frivolity. 

The situation seemed even less palatable when he had 
succeeded in putting on his costume. The attire of the 
other supers was dubious enough: tunics reaching well 
down to the knees, flesh-colored tights and sandals. But 
McNicol and Charley Foss, arriving after the distribution 
of all the better apparel, had been forced to take what 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


137 


was left. Foss’s tunic descended like an overcoat, almost 
to his ankles, while McNicol’s dangled about his thighs, 
much in the manner of shirt tails. And his sandals were 
an inch too long; he had to buckle them with extreme 
tightness to prevent them from dropping off. 

Even in those days he cherished a very jealous sense of 
his own dignity; and he now wavered close to the point 
of throwing up the whole venture. His odd predilection 
for neatness was revolted, too; the ridiculous tunic he 
wore was smeared about the neck with reddish stains 
from the necks of numberless supers before him. 

Just then Harry completed Charley Foss’s make-up, 
and called to McNicol: 

“ ’Ere you are, my beauty! The larst one, thynk 
Gawd! ” 

McNicol sat and endured the final indignity of being 
swabbed with grease paint. 

“Done!” announced their cockney overlord, pushing 
McNicol’s angry features away from him with distaste. 
“Naow, let’s ’ave a look!” 

They clustered about him for inspection. 

“A ’ell of a lookin’ mob you myke! ” 

The Roman rabble laughed sheepishly. All sorts of 
men were here: a few, like Charley Foss, for the lark of 
the thing; but most—including the half dozen ex-soldiers 
whose uniforms lay on the benches—because they needed 
the ten cents they were earning for the evening’s work. 

“Well,” drawled Harry, and mounted a low stool, “a 
mob’s what you are, anywy. A regular blahd-thirsty 
mob! Out to kill some one. First you’re after Brutus— 
that’s Mister Booth. Then you’re after Marc Ynthony. 
Let’s ’ear yer graowl a bit.” 

He held out his arms and they roared, diffidently. 

“Nah, nah!” Harry spat disgustedly. “This ’ere yn’t 


138 


THE RED-BLOOD 


no Sundy school. Graowl, I said—like this!” He emit¬ 
ted a petrifying bellow. 

They roared, less self-consciously. 

“That’s better,” he complimented, then raised one hand. 
“Watch this ’ere arm o’ mine. When I ’old it daown— 
like this—you graowl low, see? When I ryse it—so—you 
graowl louder.” 

They practiced mob-barking perspiringly in the dank 
basement. McNicol found himself faintly interested; 
oddly enough, he discovered he could put himself into this 
ludicrous clamor; before they were through, he was con¬ 
vinced he could howl more terrifyingly than any of his 
fellow Romans. 

Then Harry explained the business of the scene, and 
they rehearsed dashing madly back and forth about the 
stool from which he exhorted them. McNicol became 
ever more in earnest, yet his loose sandals interfered 
considerably with his proficiency in this phase of his 
duties. 

“Curtain in fifteen minutes!” they became aware of 
Sol’s voice warning from the door. 

Harry, the dynamic, descended to their midst. 

“All you got t’ do is watch me,” he continued. “I’ll be 
in front of you all the time. When I run ahead, you fol¬ 
low me; when I back up, you do the syme. Also watch 
my arms.” He threaded his way to the door. “Naow you 
sty right ’ere till I call you.” 

One of them, a slender, studious-looking chap with 
spectacles, voiced their common disappointment: “Can’t 
we go up and stand in the wings?” 

Harry drew down one corner of his mouth sardonically. 
“Sy, d’you think you’re being pyde t’ watch the shaow? 
Haow much room d’you s’pose there’d be on the styge if 
we let you all loose? Right ’ere’s where you sty, see? 




THE FOSS FAMILY 


i39 


We don’t use you till Act Three; but if you’re good, I’ll 
let you see the rest of the ply, mybe.” 

He slammed the door behind him. 

McNicol looked at his friend significantly. Charley’s 
eyes were docile; his small, indecisive mouth, humorous 
but infirm, accepted the confinement philosophically. 

But McNicol had no intention of beeing cooped up in 
this ill-smelling dungeon. 

“Come on,” he directed. 

Foss followed him half-heartedly. A few of the others 
rose, as if to emulate his example. 

At the ladder, the watchful Harry pounced upon 
McNicol. 

“Didn’t you ’ear what I told you?” he objurgated. 
“Back you go, naow!” 

McNicol continued up the steps. “Mr. Booth said us 
two could come up.” Charley Foss, emboldened by his 
ally’s physical impressiveness, corroborated the fact. 

Harry’s acquiescence took negative form; he turned 
fiercely upon the two or three other supers who had started 
up the ladder, tentatively. “Back you gao,” he bullied, 
“or git aht altogether.” 

They vanished abjectly. McNicol felt nothing but 
self-satisfied contempt for them and their fellows, sitting 
meekly on the benches in the cellar below. They were 
stupid; they were timid; he was bold and he was in¬ 
genious. He deserved preference over them. 

The performance was about to begin. Members of the 
company crowded about him: conspiratorial Senators 
chatted with flower girls; soothsayers unbent to Roman 
matrons. The actresses, with their rouged cheeks and 
penciled eyelids, made McNicol vaguely uncomfortable. 
All of them were immoral women, he made small doubt; 
and his presence among them seemed to give his sanction 
to their turpitude. At any rate, he had quite lost his 


140 


THE RED-BLOOD 


earlier self-disgust over having come; on the contrary, he 
now admitted himself actively interested in the unfamiliar 
proceedings. Somehow, the fact he had outwitted Harry, 
had demonstrated his superiority over the other members 
of the rabble, filled him with buoyant gusto. 

Then all at once—he had heard no command for silence 
—the surf of chatter completely subsided, and hopeless 
confusion disentangled itself into order. The curtain 
swished up. 

McNicol, standing discreetly back in the right wings, 
could see nothing of the audience; the stage was precisely 
as it had been for the past fifteen minutes, save for the 
actors who had begun speaking; yet even he could per¬ 
ceive the electric change in the atmosphere, a certain 
impalpable pulsating quality—as if the convergence of 
two thousand eyes upon one spot had impregnated the 
very air. The waves beat in upon him, sheltered as he 
was, with a force almost physical; and he caught himself 
dreading the moment when he must bare himself to that 
focused scrutiny. 

Presently there issued from the auditorium a crackling 
rataplan of applause, and he identified Edwin Booth on 
the stage. An odd hesitancy seemed to cloak the great 
man, as if he could not be entirely certain of his welcome; 
recently in another city there had been some sort of dem¬ 
onstration against him because of his brother’s crime. 
Once he had begun speaking, however, his uncertainty 
melted away, like a will-o’-the-wisp before warm sunshine. 

The universal tension infused in McNicol a reluctant 
curiosity; he watched the tragedian alertly. Yet the 
strange feeling of expectancy Edwin Booth had the faculty 
of evoking in most people scarcely touched him. 

“Hmpf ! He’s not so much,” McNicol told himself, 
stubbornly. The thing looked absurdly easy. Grace of 
mind and body, gentle melancholy, effortless poise, 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


141 

beauty for itself—these were not attributes he could 
appraise highly. Edwin Booth, he speedily diagnosed, 
was “pucey.” And the character of Brutus annoyed him 
excessively—all this indecision, this backing and filling, 
about sacred duty. If Brutus meant to kill Caesar, why 
not do it and have done? Introspection in any form 
seemed obviously silly. 

Julius Caesar, now, he could understand and appreciate; 
he thought the actor who played that part far superior to 
Booth. Here was a man who did things, a successful gen¬ 
eral, a shrewd politician, a person of energy and courage. 
Later on, McNicol almost had a thrill when Caesar spoke 
the noble lines: 

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; 

The valiant never taste of death but once.” 

Yet ultimately he suffered some disillusion when Caesar 
permitted himself to be stabbed to death without even 
making a fight of it. 

The first act ended; and McNicol, released from ab¬ 
sorption, suddenly realized Charley Foss was nowhere 
around. It was not till he had crossed to the left wings 
that he discovered his friend regrettably engaged in con¬ 
versation with some stage hetaera. Charley was forever 
up to this sort of thing; he seemed to have a weakness 
for good-looking women. Whenever he and McNicol 
would pass such a one on the street, he would look around, 
stare after her, wink covetously. McNicol had no pa¬ 
tience for this form of dalliance. 

“What the devil are you doing?” he upbraided, when 
Charley had loathfully answered his summons. 

“Just talking,” parried the young gallant. “No harm in 
that, is there, Doc? Nice girl, too.” 

McNicol scoffed. “Nice girl—yes, I’ll bet she is! Your 
family’d think so, wouldn’t they?” 




142 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Say, you are broad-minded. Always harping on my 
family. As if they’d specially appointed you to look after 
my morals.” 

McNicol’s make-up concealed the fact that his face 
flushed. “No, they didn’t do that, but I guess they 
wouldn’t take it amiss if I did.” 

Charley laughed boisterously. “Oh, by the way.” He 
sobered instantly. “I forgot to tell you my sister’s here 
to-night.” 

“Here!” 

“With old Ketchum. You know—her regular beau.” 
Charley was searching his expression with peculiar intent¬ 
ness, McNicol realized. “I told her we were going to be 
in the show; and if you ask me, it’s because she wants 
to see you she made Ketch get tickets.” 

Several sensations commingled in McNicol: a pardon¬ 
able conceit; a sudden self-consciousness; pique at his 
friend for having told Ellen Foss; a peculiar animosity 
toward the inoffensive, forty-year-old Ketchum; but most 
of all, a renewal of his curiosity as to just what Charley 
was driving at. That young irresponsible had dropped 
hints like this before, but never so broadly. McNicol 
had fancied, once or twice, that the whole family’s grati¬ 
tude to him for saving Charley’s life was tempered with 
a certain additional interest. 

He determined upon blunt inquiry. “And what d’you 
mean by that?” 

Charley laughed again, but not so explosively. “Open 
your eyes, man! that’s all you got to do.” 

McNicol had it on the tip of his tongue to tell his 
friend to go to the devil; that he, McNicol, was an 
engaged man. Yet, as before, wdien he had had the same 
impulse, a species of canny inhibition restrained him. 

Charley responded to a glance of riant invitation from 
the young actress, and rejoined her—without interference. 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


143 


For McNicol, as the force of his friend’s intimation be¬ 
came clear, stood staring at the floor in perplexity. It 
seemed to him he saw things quite clearly, all at once: 
he had a chance, a very good chance, of displacing 
Ketchum and marrying the daughter of a wealthy man. 

The summoning of the supers at the end of the first 
scene of the third act discovered him still dazed. As 
they collected in the wings, under Harry’s astringent eye, 
he had a violent attack of self-consciousness. It seemed 
for the moment unthinkable that he should rush out upon 
the stage, shout and cavort ridiculously about, with all 
these other sheep; yes, that was bad enough, but to 
appear before Ellen Foss in this scanty, flapping tunic! 

He hung back, and when he must at last join in with the 
pack, he was careful to keep as far away from the audi¬ 
ence as possible. Charley Foss he detected roaring ex¬ 
citedly, enjoying the experience to the utmost; but he him¬ 
self became one vast apprehension, lest he be exposed 
to the satire of Claude Ketchum. 

During one of the mob’s rapid shiftings about the ros¬ 
trum whence Marc Antony swayed them, McNicol sud¬ 
denly lost one of his sandals. Wretchedly, he attempted 
to find it; but the oration was reaching its climax and his 
excited fellow Romans shunted him to and fro. In 
another instant his other loose sandal had slipped off and 
he was hopping gingerly about—with much the same 
embarrassment as the dreamer who fancies himself on 
busy thoroughfares in a nightgown. 

“Here was a Caesar! Whence comes such another?” 
demanded Marc Antony. 

There was a tumultuous rush backward. McNicol, 
unprepared, was almost knocked down. The brawny 
citizen just in front of him stamped one heel down on his 
unprotected toes; at the moment, the pain was terrific, 
and he seemed unable to move. Then the rabble was 


144 


THE RED-BLOOD 


past him; for one quivering instant, he stood alone, con¬ 
scious chiefly of an instinct to minister to his mangled 
foot. A couple of yards away he caught sight of one of 
his sandals. The dim realization of Harry's apoplectic 
eyes in the wings finally galvanized him into precipitate 
flight—just as a barely perceptible ripple of laughter 
was becoming audible from the dark void beyond the 
footlights. 


hi 

His first glimmering awareness next morning seemed 
to flutter about the unusual sensations in his head. 
Usually he awoke instantly, all his faculties alert; but 
now consciousness came slowly, reluctantly. When he 
sat up, he felt a slight giddiness. His eyes would not 
seem to focus sharply. A twinge of pain lanced his right 
temple. 

Frowning, he remembered going to bed the night before. 
Now, at any rate, the bed no longer spun around as it had 
last night, so that he must grip its sides to keep from 
being thrown out. He recalled, too, coming home in a 
hack with Charley Foss; and Charley’s maudlin mirth 
when McNicol had staggered a bit in walking from the 
rig to the front door of the rooming house. At the time, 
it had seemed funny even to him, but now— He shivered 
with self-disgust. Drinking hot gin till after midnight 
with Charley Foss—that was something to be proud of! 

He stood up, and the sudden spasm of torment from 
his injured toes resurrected all the vivid details of last 
night’s disgraceful catastrophe. For the first time, the 
injury claimed his undistracted attention; he sat down 
on the edge of the bed and bent over his foot. None of 
the bones were broken, but the flesh on the outside of his 
great toe had been torn open; the whole toe was lead 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


X 4 S 

« 

colored, could not be moved without an astonishing 
amount of anguish. 

Then his thoughts became even more painful than his 
toe. He did not at all mind the audience’s snickering, nor 
Harry’s savage scorn. These people did not identify 
him; to them he was only a luckless, sprawling, unnamed 
buffoon. But what of Ellen Foss, and that assiduous 
beau of hers, Ketchum? 

He decided abruptly he would go to the Foss house 
that night for dinner. 

But even if he had made a fool of himself, there was 
still the day’s work to be done. He began dressing. 
Ordinarily, the operation required not more than fifteen 
minutes; but now, constantly handicapped by his maimed 
foot, he must proceed cautiously, clumsily, at less than 
half his usual speed. He had awakened late, too; so that 
by the time he quit his small hall bedroom and limped 
down the stairs to the street it was nearly eight o’clock, 
instead of half past seven. 

His boarding house was also on Montcalm Street, only 
a few doors farther east. He entered it testily, and began 
swallowing his oatmeal and coffee, his legs astride the 
chair in a posture that constantly suggested he was 
about to spring upon the food. His head had stopped 
aching, but it still felt disagreeably muggy. There was 
a certain internal pressure upon his eyes; he had the sen¬ 
sation of having caught a heavy cold. There was no 
appetite in him, either, for work, and this was extraordi¬ 
nary: usually he fairly bounded from his bed, eager to 
plunge into activity of some sort. 

As he approached Woodward Avenue he perceived a 
south-bound street car a block or two away; and it oc¬ 
curred to him that by taking it he might save a little time 
and simultaneously spare his injured foot. The street 
car, an ill-favored contraption drawn haltingly by a single 


THE RED-BLOOD 


146 

wretched horse, drew near and paused for him, with an 
air of accomplishing an unusual feat. And indeed, the 
appearance of a prospective passenger on a street corner 
amounted to a rare phenomenon. The car was empty, in 
fact. McNicol boarded it with a sense of unfamiliarity. 
It was possibly the third time he had done so during his 
eighteen months in the city. A street car was a convey¬ 
ance for cripples and old women; everybody else walked, 
or drove about in private carriages. 

He surrendered five pennies grudgingly, but with an 
air of helping finance the traction company, and sat down 
to concentrate upon his more immediate problems. He 
w'ould be half an hour late, even with the street car’s help. 
Old Rorick would be crabbed, of course: McNicol could 
picture him at this instant, beginning to fume. Punctual¬ 
ity was a positive mania with old Rorick; he was always 
at the chemical works by a quarter before eight at the 
latest—usually by seven thirty; ordinarily he gave the 
bounce to any employee who was not already at work at 
eight. Probably he would dock McNicoPs ten dollars a 
week, at the very least. 

“No, he won’t, either!” McNicol shook his head sav¬ 
agely. “Just let him try. I’m about ready to quit the 
old skin, anyhow.” 

But half an hour late! The transgression took on 
enormous proportions; it was simply unprecedented. It 
was his first offense, true; but that would not save him. 
True, also, he was dissatisfied with his job and intent 
upon improving it at the first opportunity. Well enough; 
but it would be one thing to leave Cyrus Rorick, when he 
had found something better, or perhaps was ready to 
start a business of his own; and quite another thing to 
be discharged, to be out of work once more, to walk the 
streets—like that soldier, last night! Even with an ex¬ 
cellent reference, getting a job was hopeless enough these 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


i 47 


days. And what would the Foss family think, after 
having gone to considerable trouble to find him employ¬ 
ment with Rorick? Would they help him again? “I guess 
not!” And Jenny! How much longer would she wait 
for him? 

“Damn Charley Foss, anyhow!” 

McNicol was not of the apprehensive sort; usually he 
was thoroughly occupied with maintaining the offensive. 
But now he scowled blankly; something must be done. 
The street car bumped along the uneven strap rails with 
maddening sluggishness. All the octogenarians in town 
were out, it seemed; the car, for the first time in its long 
career, probably, stopped at every block. Yes, something 
had to be done. In his disquietude, McNicol reached 
into his inside pocket and drew forth a small packet of 
papers. These were billheads; at the top of each sheet 
appeared the printed script: “To Cyrus Rorick, Dr.,” 
together with an impressive and highly flattering pictorial 
representation of the concern’s four-story brick edifice 
on Jefferson Avenue, an imaginary flag undulating vigor¬ 
ously from an imaginary flag pole. The words, also: 
“Drugs and Chemicals. Pharmaceutical Supplies.” Each 
one of the five or six billheads bore upon its horizontal 
lines of pale blue the statement of indebtedness of some 
local druggist; and each account was past due. For 
McNicol was not only the leading salesman for the con¬ 
cern, but, in addition, the principal bill collector. 

Then, all at once, came the solution to his difficulty. 
The uppermost statement of account bore the name of 
Willard Weems. The amount due was some eighty-nine 
dollars. The fortunate coincidence of the matter, the 
circumstance that gave McNicol his inspiration, was that 
Willard Weems’s drugstore was situated on Farmer Street, 
at a point scarcely more than a block away from the street 
car’s present position. Promptly McNicol disembarked 


THE RED-BLOOD 


148 

and began limping thither, his plans rapidly taking form. 
He would explain his tardiness to Cyrus Rorick on the 
score of having attempted to collect the bill from Weems. 
Slight misgivings threatened to overcloud the brightness 
of this story: it was unprecedented procedure, for one 
thing; and to a man like Rorick anything unprece¬ 
dented was extremely suspicious, ipso facto. The mis¬ 
givings thickened; in fact, the more McNicol deliberated 
about the matter, the more certain he became that his 
employer would see through the stratagem. 

“I’ve got to get results this time,” he muttered. “Show 
Rorick some actual money.” 

The prospect of doing so, however, was not exactly 
rosy. His pencil notations along the bottom of the bill¬ 
head corroborated the fact that he had already inter¬ 
viewed Willard Weems at least a dozen times during the 
preceding three months. Always the druggist had pleaded 
hard times and promised to settle the account in the im¬ 
mediate future. Upon each occasion, McNicol had grown 
more aggressive, more threatening; he suspected that 
Weems could find the money if necessary. But lately he 
had never been able to find his man in the store. 

And this was precisely what happened again this morn¬ 
ing. Weems’s daughter, a timid-looking and very obese 
virgin of thirty, presently emerged from behind the pre¬ 
scription case, and abased herself before him. 

“No, sir, pa hain’t home.” She seemed perpetually 
short of breath and inhaled noisily. 

The collector bristled with a rage that seemed quite 
helpless. “Did you tell him what I said last time I was 
here?” 

“Oh yes, sir.” 

After all, what could you do with a woman like this? 

“It’s very strange your father’s never here when I call.” 
McNicol glanced about the stuffy little shop menacingly, 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


149 


as if he suspected that his prey might be concealed behind 
one of the rows of dusty glass bottles. “What does he do 
—run out when he sees me coming?” 

“Oh no, sir,” panted the Weems girl, meekly. 

Till this instant he had felt frustrated, groping in the 
dark. But the druggist’s daughter, at his belligerent 
scrutiny of the store’s interior, had taken a single in¬ 
stinctive step in the direction of the prescription case, as 
if to forestall his advance in that quarter. 

“So ho, my dear,” he surmised swiftly, “that's the lay 
0’ the land, is it?” 

His inherent urge to activity and his present predica¬ 
ment with Cyrus Rorick conspired to bring him to an 
immediate determination. 

“I'll call in again to-morrow,” he told the fat girl, and 
took a step toward the door; then quickly ran around the 
end of the counter and back of the prescription case. The 
little triangular area was quite empty. 

He heard the Weems girl’s indignant puffing behind 
him. 

“I’ll tell my pa. You’ll be sorry-” 

Faintly disconcerted, he was noting that a door to the 
left, up one step, stood ajar. He swung it open and per¬ 
ceived a dark narrow staircase leading to the second 
floor. 

“Don’t you dare-” 

McNicol, warmed to the chase by now, sprang up the 
steps; strangely enough, his injured foot gave him no pain 
at all. A dining-room appeared first, the half-eaten 
breakfast still on the oilclothed table. Xo fugitive debtor 
here. Xoises of the fat daughter ascending the staircase 
reached his ear. Rapidly he proceeded into an adjacent 
bedroom, also empty. He began to doubt the truth of 
his sudden conjecture. 

The daughter burst into the room, replete with right- 




THE RED-BLOOD 


150 

eous anger. With poorly concealed anxiety, too. McNicol 
saw her round eyes glance hastily—at his feet, apparently. 
He looked down; and then, with a final inkling, knelt and 
looked under the bed. Yes, assuredly, there lurked some 
dark object there. He reached out, encountered solid 
substance, and dragged forth an exceedingly sheepish little 
old man with red eyes and drooping Dundreary whiskers. 

“I’ll pay, I tell you,” squeaked Willard Weems. “Be 
still, Gertie, can’t you?” 


IV 

Cyrus Rorick, having had a very hard time of it him¬ 
self during his younger days, seemed imbued now, in the 
days of his prosperity, with the righteous idea of keeping 
all his dependents thoroughly underfoot, of stamping out 
inexorably the slightest manifestation in any employee of 
an incipient ambition to emulate his own difficult rise in 
the world. He discouraged initiative and originality— 
what he called “monkeyshines”—because, secretly, he 
feared such things. What he wanted was a slavish and 
tremulous subordination. His private desk was in the 
outer office, where he could keep an eye on his hirelings 
every instant, and assure himself they were not conspiring 
to cheat him of time or money. 

Thus he spied McNicol the instant he appeared. 

“Come here, sir!” The other workers stole scared 
looks at the culprit. “D’you know what time it is?” 

McNicol was not precisely afraid of his employer; 
certainly he had no sense of physical shrinking from the 
encounter. Rorick, in fact, always seemed a rather 
ludicrous little man with his crack-the-whip attitude. 
McNicol could have picked him up and thrown him 
through the window without much effort. He was very 
short and spare, not much over a hundred pounds in 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


151 

weight. His features were small and sharp; he himself 
was sharp, he liked to think. The more salient details 
of his appearance were, first, his wig, which no longer 
matched his own fast-graying hair at the sides and back, 
which indeed had never properly fitted him—this was 
perhaps why he always wore that shabby and discolored 
straw hat in the office, both summer and winter. Sec¬ 
ondly, the fact that he was smooth-shaven: a rare phe¬ 
nomenon in those days. And thirdly, the remarkable 
narrowness of his head: it had neither breadth nor depth; 
it possessed a cylindrical shape that would have astounded 
and delighted a craniometrist, and was scarcely thicker 
than his neck—so that people said truly that Cyrus 
Rorick was the one man in Detroit who could take his 
shirt off without unbuttoning his collar. 

There was in McNicol, however, an innate respect for 
all authority. The circumstance that Cyrus Rorick was 
an employer invested him with a certain impersonal pres¬ 
tige that commanded instant obedience. 

“I stopped on my way to see Willard Weems,” he ex¬ 
plained, briefly. Even at this critical pass he found it 
impossible to truckle. 

“Oh, you did, eh?” sneered Rorick, and confirmed the 
words with several rapid nods that were unmistakably 
threatening. McNicol was by all odds the most valuable 
employee in the place; both of them knew it. He worked 
as hard as any of the others; and in addition he was more 
energetic and enterprising. Already he knew the local 
pharmacy trade intimately, and the fact that he was a 
full-fledged doctor gave him a certain distinction with the 
physicians and druggists he called upon. The results he 
had achieved spoke for themselves: Rorick’s Detroit 
business had increased within the eighteen months a full 
twenty per cent. Not only that. He was an exceptionally 
good collector; he got money out of people without driv- 



THE RED-BLOOD 


152 

ing their business elsewhere. In short, an exceptional 
man; one whom the average employer would have con¬ 
gratulated himself on possessing. 

But not Cyrus Rorick. The greater his subordinate’s 
achievement, the more he belittled him. He did not want 
any one of his vassals to grow too successful, too strong; 
it might prove dangerous; he would rather lose a little 
business and keep an unchallenged whip hand. 

At the moment, McNicol half realized all this; he could 
detect in Rorick’s somewhat shifty eye an uncompro¬ 
mising hostility. 

“And can you tell me any good reason for calling on 
the trade before you report at this office?” 

McNicol explained that he had repeatedly tried to find 
Weems in his store. “He’s been dodging me; and I 
thought if I dropped in on him at an unexpected hour, 
I’d catch him.” 

Still those incredulous nods from the battered straw 
hat. McNicol had planned to produce the spoils of his 
raid with a grand gesture; but now he drew the money 
forth and laid it on the desk with a somewhat self-con¬ 
scious air. Nor was the effect upon Rorick at all stag¬ 
gering, or even mollifying. He seemed, in fact, a little 
chagrined. 

“ ’Bout time,” he snapped, and counted the money 
carefully, suspiciously. Then he dismissed McNicol 
curtly, without looking up: “Don’t let this happen again. 
Never!” 

More relieved than anything else, McNicol walked back 
to his high desk in silence. George Wickham, the stock 
clerk, a blond young man of thirty and the only occu¬ 
pant of the office for whom he had any liking, caught his 
eye and winked humorously. But McNicol scarcely 
smiled. Straightway he began working at his accounts, 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


153 

and shortly thereafter set forth for his round of calls 
upon various druggists. 

He was not in the slightest degree revengeful toward 
his employer. The truth, as he was honest enough to per¬ 
ceive, was that he himself was solely at fault: he had 
overslept—a serious offense; and it was pure luck, pieced 
out with a bit of fast thinking, that he had not lost his 
position. He did not in the slightest blame Cyrus Rorick 
for reprimanding him; in fact, he had that much higher 
opinion of him for seeing through the story. 

But though he carried no grudge, McNicol remained 
more thoughtful than usual throughout the day. For it 
came to him with greater clarity than ever that there was 
no hope of advancement for him in Rorick’s employ. It 
was a one-man concern, and always vrould be. His salary 
might eventually be increased, but even that was doubt¬ 
ful. There was quite no chance of his ever becoming a 
member of the firm. 

“Not that I’d ever be wanting to go partners with 
him!” he sniffed. 

No, Rorick was far too conservative. He’d be satisfied 
forever with things as they were. He had no imagination, 
no aggressiveness; he wouldn’t reach out for opportuni¬ 
ties. McNicol, on the contrary, already felt the stirring 
of big ideas within himself; the pharmaceutical business 
was still in its swaddling clothes, he was convinced, and 
destined to achieve astounding proportions. There was 
in him an irresistible urge to expansion, a fierce refusal 
to remain obscure and mediocre. His present situation 
frustrated his deepest instincts and desires. 

“I like the business. It’s the thing I want to do.” 
The day’s work was done now, and he pointed toward 
the office once more, to turn in his reports. And all at 
once there took form within him, more definitely than 


*54 


THE RED-BLOOD 


ever, the full-fledged resolution to cut loose from Rorick 
as soon as possible, and launch a business of his own. 

‘Til make him look sick in five years’ time.” 

McNicol was no visionary, extracting spurious emo¬ 
tional thrills from good intentions he would never carry 
into effect. From that very moment, indeed, he began 
planning the details of his future venture. He himself 
would be the head of the new enterprise, of course; he 
would supply all the energy—sell the output, look after 
the finances, make the wheels go round. He might be a 
bit weak on the manufacturing side. Perhaps it would 
be well to broach the plan to George Wickham, the stock 
clerk; he was capable of looking after that part of the 
business. 

But money! At that thought his heart misgave him. 
Where could he lay his hands upon the necessary capital? 
All he had in the world was his sixteen hundred dollar 
bonus, which he had religiously preserved. He would 
require at least five thousand. Wickham, he knew, had 
almost nothing. His family could not help, by one 
penny. What of James Gough? His attention rested 
upon that possibility, hopefully; it did not occur to him 
there was anything mercenary in speculating upon what 
sized dot his fiancee might bring him. But here, too, the 
prospect was highly dubious: James Gough was not the 
rich man Cartwright people had imagined; he was merely 
well-to-do, and most of his money was tied up in his mill 
and house. He might help a little, but not much. 

His fugitive mind, caroming off recreantly, came with¬ 
out warning to Ellen Foss; and before he could check 
himself there leaped into his consciousness a lusty temp¬ 
tation: if he married Ellen Foss, now, instead of Jenny! 
Then the rest of him caught up with this traitorous sug¬ 
gestion and instantly expunged it. 

Nevertheless, when he found on his desk a brief note 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


155 

t 

from Charley Foss reminding him of his promise to come 
for dinner that night, he reversed his earlier determina¬ 
tion and decided he would go. The Fosses were the only 
rich people he knew. Surely there was no harm in keep¬ 
ing on the right side of them. 

v 

Unfairly enough, Charley was the only member of the 
family with either charm or good looks. Still more un¬ 
fairly, they were all under his spell. Mr. and Mrs. Foss 
doubtless cared just as much for Ellen and Benjamin, 
junior, the solemn elder brother; but their youngest child 
was the one they spoiled. It followed that they were 
deeply beholden to the man who had saved Charley’s life 
at Andersonville. They had come to like McNicol, more¬ 
over, for his own qualities, once they really knew him. 
In spite of the lack of commanding height, his magnifi¬ 
cent physique lent him a very definite presence. By no 
account handsome, his features nevertheless reflected an 
undeniable blunt forcefulness; the very presence of the 
disfiguring scar across his lower lip seemed to contribute 
a crude distinction. Rightly, his friends regarded him as 
a “comer.” 

“Well, and how do you get along with our friend Rorick, 
these days?” inquired Benjamin Foss, senior, after the 
women had left the dining-room. 

He spoke genially, which in itself was a convincing 
proof of his benignant attitude. For he was given to 
irritability—the result, very largely, of insomnia. His 
protuberant eyes of faded blue held a look of nervous 
dread, as if he feared the wakefulness of each succeeding 
night. Yet he appeared extremely healthy because of 
his fresh and rosy complexion; indeed, it was one of 
his hardest crosses that no one would take his ail- 


THE RED-BLOOD 


156 

ments seriously. Altogether, an odd-looking person; yet 
during the past decade he had become one of the richest 
men in the city. This new three-story frame house 
of his on Fort Street was a show place for tourists 
to gape at. 

McNicol reflected an instant before replying. It was 
Mr. Foss who had procured him his present employment; 
but he judged that his host was not an intimate of 
Rorick’s and that his own relationship with Foss was the 
closer. 

Charley chimed in, irreverently. “Yes, Mac—how is 
Cy, the old spendthrift?” 

If anyone else, even Benjamin, junior, had ventured 
such impudence, he would have come to grief. But know¬ 
ing Charley, they all smiled. 

“Mr. Rorick is a very fine man,” answered McNicol, 
tactfully. “A very good business man, too.” It was 
evident he was reserving his real opinions. 

“But an old skin, eh?” demanded Charley. “Is that 
what you mean? Don’t be afraid—speak up. That’s 
what we all think of him.” 

His father felt called upon to remonstrate. “Tut-tut! 
Mr. McNicol doesn’t mean any such thing.” But he ap¬ 
peared amused. 

The visitor nodded a little. “I have all the respect in 
the world for Mr. Rorick, but I don’t know how well we 
get along together. The fact is, Mr. Foss, I’m a bit dis¬ 
couraged. I don’t believe there’s any future for me where 
I am.” 

“Don’t you think,” Mr. Foss asked, after a moment, 
“you’re really making a mistake in not practicing medi¬ 
cine?” 

There was a slight tightening of attention among the 
three male Fosses, at this, as if they were all vitally inter¬ 
ested in his future. 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


157 

But McNicol shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he in¬ 
formed the rich lumberman, respectfully, but flatly. How¬ 
ever much he might be dazzled by the Foss grandeur, 
however much he wanted to bask in the family’s favor, 
he was shrewd enough not to attempt to ingratiate him¬ 
self by false servility. Even if he was an obscure nobody, 
he would not let them take him cheaply. 

Benjamin Foss looked slightly nettled and more dis¬ 
appointed, but the irrepressible Charley started laughing. 

“Judas Priest, you’re a cocky beggar!” he said. 
“But what’s the good of grubbing at some filthy busi¬ 
ness when you can be a professional man? Like me, for 
instance,” he added, with mock dignity. 

Benjamin, senior and junior, smiled tolerantly. Char¬ 
ley’s feeble law practice was one of the family jokes. 
Even McNicol compelled himself to appear amused, but 
then he directed himself to Mr. Foss once more, in all 
earnestness. 

“No, sir, business is what I was made for. Selling 
things, dealing with people. And the chemical business 
I like better than any other sort. You see, it gives me a 
chance to use my medical education; it’s a combination 
of business and profession.” He leaned forward, by way 
of emphasis. “Just between ourselves, sir, what I mean 
to do, as soon as I can, is to start a concern of my own.” 

He watched his host’s face expectantly. Anything 
could happen. Mr. Foss might wring him by the hand 
and even urge him to come to him if he needed money. 
Or he might shake his head disapprovingly, tell McNicol 
he was a fool. 

Mr. Foss, as a matter of fact, did neither. 

“A natural ambition,” he commented, but appeared 
only mildly interested. “My advice is, go slow, take your 
time. Most young men are too impatient; they want to 
start out for themselves before they’ve had enough expe- 


THE RED-BLOOD 


158 

rience. Remember, too, conditions are bad right now; 
it’s a poor time to be beginning a new business.” He 
pushed back his chair and made as if to stand up. 

McNicol felt somewhat rebuffed. But after all, he re¬ 
flected, it was too much to expect that a seasoned business 
man like Benjamin Foss should divulge any great enthu¬ 
siasm on the instant. More than likely he wanted to 
think the proposition over at his leisure. It was enough, 
McNicol decided, to have opened the subject, to have put 
the idea into Mr. Foss’s head. 

‘Til certainly bear your advice in mind,” he said, as 
they left the dining-room together. 

Mrs. Foss, a stout, white-haired woman, was talking 
in the sitting-room with Claude Ketchum, the unobtrusive 
middle-aged suitor for her daughter’s favor. 

“Ellen’s gone upstairs to write a letter,” she told Mc¬ 
Nicol. “She’ll be right back.” 

He bowed and sat down, but inwardly he was consid¬ 
erably disturbed. Why single him out for an explanation 
of her daughter’s absence? He wasn’t courting Ellen 
Foss. Now that his eyes were slightly opened to the em¬ 
barrassing state of affairs, he remembered that of late 
Mrs. Foss had adopted a beamingly maternal manner 
with him. Then there was that cryptic remark of Char¬ 
ley’s at the theater last night—about his sister’s having 
come to the performance solely to see him. Ellen herself 
had given many evidences of liking him; but now the 
flattering but uncomfortable truth burst in upon him, for 
the first time clearly, that she had fallen in love with him; 
that the Foss family had wind of how matters stood, and 
were already acclaiming him as a son-in-law elect. 

McNicol glanced uncomfortably at Claude Ketchum, 
whose long and faithful pursuit now seemed definitely 
enshrouded with failure. Poor old Ketch! He looked as 
inoffensive as ever, but a little woebegone, his pudgy body 


THE FOSS FAMILY 


i59 


hunched together, his mild, bearded face overcast with 
an expression of tranquil resignation. Ordinarily, Mc- 
Nicol liked him well enough; but now he burned with 
sudden contempt. Here was an interloper about to run 
off with Ketchum’s girl, and Ketchum wasn’t going to lift 
a finger. McNicol would like to see any one play that 
game on him! It would serve Ketchum jolly well right 
if he, McNicol, did shove him into the discard. 

But that was the perplexing part of it: his hands were 
tied, his fealty already plighted. In short, he was pre¬ 
empted. A vague regret filled him that he had so success¬ 
fully played the swashbuckler in the Gough parlor that 
June night. If he were free now, he could with one ges¬ 
ture step instantly into the possession of wealth and 
power. 

“I wouldn’t marry Ellen Foss, anyway,” he sought to 
solace himself. She wasn’t as good looking as Jenny 
Gough, by a long way; in fact, she was almost homely. 
He respected her; yes, even liked her. But he was a 
little afraid of her. She had too good a head for a woman. 
As a final fatal barrier to sentiment, she was a full two 
inches taller than he, and, he suspected, a year or two 
older. 

No, he didn’t love her. Still- 

What harassed him most sorely, however, was the fact 
that he was here under false pretenses. The Fosses took 
him for a fancy-free, unaffianced young man, and they 
were within their rights in assuming as much from his 
silence; for surely if one’s affections are otherwise placed, 
it behooves one to announce the fact at once and not let 
unhappy maidens languish in vain. Every time he came 
to the Foss house, every time Mrs. Foss smiled at him, 
the knot was being drawn about him more tightly. 

Unquestionably it was his bounden duty, by all the 



i6o 


THE RED-BLOOD 


codes in existence, to speak out now—to-night—however 
awkward the announcement might be. 

No, it would be much easier to tell Charley, in an off¬ 
hand way, the next time they met downtown. And— 
insidious thought!—perhaps if he delayed telling any one, 
the situation might change, somehow, and his predicament 
solve itself. It galled him to think of surrendering the 
enormous advantages that might be his so easily; per¬ 
haps, too, the Fosses might lose all interest in him. He 
wanted more time to think. 

Ellen appeared at the sitting-room door just then, 
dressed for the street. 

“I must just step out and mail this letter,” she said. 
“It has to go at once.” Then she glanced, with a sum¬ 
moning of all her brazenness, right past Claude Ketchum, 
full at McNicol. “Anybody want to walk out with me to 
the post office?” 

McNicol rose automatically. It was in his mind to tell 
her he was leaving soon, anyway, and would spare her 
the trip. Then he had the sense to perceive the ruse. 

“Let me go,” he suggested. 

Mrs. Foss beamed. Ketchum did not stir. 


CHAPTER III 


MORE ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 


I 



WO months later, one slushy February afternoon, 


-®- McNicol cut short his round of calls and turned 
toward the office, a good half hour earlier than usual, with 
the settled resolve to bring things to a head between 
Cyrus Rorick and himself. 

After his first talk with Mr. Foss on the subject, he 
had made up his mind to postpone the establishment of 
his own business for another year, at least. Financial 
conditions would doubtless be more auspicious then; his 
experience would be greater, and his judgment sounder. 
This prudent decision of his was all very well, save that 
it took no account of his employer; it assumed that Rorick 
would be content to let the situation remain as it was. 
This premise was woefully false. Ever since the episode 
of the Weems collection and McNicol’s tardiness, Rorick 
had become more and more unendurable. McNicol toiled 
with greater fervor than ever. Local sales mounted and 
receipts increased, in spite of the hard times. But Rorick 
had evidently made up his mind that this useful subordi¬ 
nate of his was growing far too strong and self-confident; 
far better to lop off his head now on some pretext or other 
than to continue fostering a young giant who might soon 
be powerful enough to inflict fatal blows. Thus he found 
fault with everything McNicol did, made himself as dis¬ 
agreeable as possible, and was now merely biding his time 
against a suitable moment for the decapitation. 


162 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Ell force the old man’s hand right now / 5 McNicol told 
himself. When in doubt, always attack—get in the first 
blow. 

Entering the office in this belligerent frame of mind, he 
was somewhat let down to discover that Rorick was not 
at his desk. Yet when he spoke to George Wickham, it 
was in a stealthy whisper. 

“Where’s the old man—upstairs ?’ 5 

The stock clerk shook his bespectacled head. “Gone 
out somewhere.” 

McNicol dumped his order blanks on the tall desk and 
prepared to complete his day’s work. Then it occurred 
to him he was overlooking an opportunity. 

“See here, George,” he began, in low tones, “have you 
ever thought of quitting the old man and starting in for 
yourself?” 

Wickham seemed dazed. He was a lanky person with 
a long, undershot jaw; when he permitted himself to smile, 
he revealed, not his teeth, but an unprepossessing crescent 
of upper gums. 

“I don’t know,” he said, cautiously. “Maybe, some 
time. Why?” 

McNicol tapped the desk with the end of his penholder. 
“Because that’s what I’m going to do. Right away. I’d 
like you to go in with me. You know the manufacturing 
part; I know the selling. A good combination.” 

The conscientious George started. “Not—not now?” 

“Now.” 

McNicol’s decisiveness seemed to reassure the stock 
clerk a little. But just then they heard footsteps outside 
the office door, and Wickham shrank back from his 
tempter with nervous apprehension. It would never do 
for Rorick to catch him communing with the unpopular 
McNicol; he would be tarred with the same stick. 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 163 

The door opened, but it was the volatile Charley Foss 
who entered. 

“Hello, old skeezicks!” he saluted his friend, noting the 
absence of restraint. “Where you been hiding yourself ?” 

It was one of Charley’s peculiar ideas of humor, when¬ 
ever he encountered an acquaintance, to extend his hand 
amiably; and then, as often as possible, to grip the other’s 
fingers in a pitiless clasp until he cried for mercy. Mc- 
Nicol was ordinarily alert against this indignity; he 
would either refuse to shake hands, or, sometimes, seize 
Charley’s hand and with his superior strength force the 
joker to his knees. But now he was preoccupied with 
weightier matters and Charley succeeded in getting his 
favorite hold. 

“Down you come!” he shouted, and pulled his victim 
from the high stool. “Now then—beg!” 

McNicol half fell on the floor, then wrenched his hand 
loose. He had been exceedingly irritated, in the first 
place, by his breezy friend’s interruption; but now he 
boiled over. The fact that the whole office was snickering 
at him only made things worse. It was all he could do to 
keep from striking Charley in the face. 

“To the devil with you!” 

“Steady, steady!” soothed Charley, more than half 
alarmed. “Can’t you take a joke?” 

George Wickham interpleaded. “I’d like to talk with 
you some other time about that—you know.” 

McNicol, still exasperated, gave a curt nod of acquies¬ 
cence, then confronted the intruder. 

“What d’you want—coming around here like this?” 

Charley grinned unfazably. 

“It’s this way, Mac,” he said, confidentially, and came 
closer. “I’m organizing a male quartette—more fun than 
a barrel of monkeys—and I jes’ want to find out if you 
can sing bass.” 



THE RED-BLOOD 


164 

McNicol was more incensed than ever by such levity. 
“Look here—you mean t’ say—in business hours—” He 
choked with indignation. “You act like a six-year-old, 
you do!” 

Charley, in such circumstances, always became peni¬ 
tent; it was difficult to remain angry with him long. “No 
harm, Mac—honest. What I really came around for was 
to remind you about to-night.” 

“To-night?” 

The pseudo-lawyer nodded. “Dinner.” 

McNicoPs resentment, however, had not wholly evap¬ 
orated. “No, I’m not coming.” 

“But you promised.” Charley’s mood was serious now, 
beyond all doubt. “The family’s expecting you.” Then, 
“Why can’t you?” 

Here was an unsurpassable chance to be rid of a 
troublesome quandary, to tell the truth, to reveal to Char¬ 
ley the existence of Miss Jenny Gough and her claims 
upon him. By way of preparation, McNicol suddenly 
demanded: 

“Why is it you’re always after me to come to dinner?” 

“What d’you mean?” For once in his life, Charley 
seemed offended. “Because we like you, that’s why. But 
we can get over it, if you think you have to get nasty. 
D’you suppose it’s any fun for me to be chasing after you 
all the time? If you had any eyes in your head—” He 
broke off, biting his lip. 

Now was the time! A dozen words would solve his 
dilemma. But McNicol somehow could not speak. In 
business—with men—he could be bold and incisive 
enough; but in a delicate situation like this, one involving 
a woman, he seemed tongue-tied. 

Charley meanwhile had recovered his amiability. “You 
will come, won’t you?” 




MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 165 

“Well, I’ll try, but you don’t understand how busy 
I am.” 

“Fine! We’ll expect you.” Charley grinned and held 
out his hand once more. McNicol, not to be caught a 
second time, seized it, crumpled it in his own large palm 
till Charley’s finger cracked. 

“Get down yourself,” he hooted. “On your knees! 
Beg like a dog!” 

Upon this pleasing spectacle of just retribution—Char¬ 
ley feebly shrieking for mercy from the floor, McNicol 
standing over him menacingly—the door opened again, 
revealing the bulging eyeballs of Cyrus Rorick. 

In spite of himself, McNicol straightened up with a 
guilty flush. Charley Foss, smiling sheepishly, scrambled 
to his feet and tried to pass the thing off as a joke. 

“He had me that time all right, Mr. Rorick,” he said, 
ineptly. 

The diminutive proprietor was so outraged by the 
wanton sacrilege that he could not control his voice for a 
moment, nor even his facial muscles. His lower jaw hung 
open and quivered. Finally he was able to point to the 
open door. 

“Clear out! ” he squeaked to Charley. Then he wheeled 
upon McNicol. “You I’ll ’tend to, after office hours.” 

By now there was a glint of satisfaction in his little 
eyes. McNicol read his doom, as did the whole office; 
and his heart sank. 

“Fool!” He cursed not only himself, but the mis¬ 
chievous Charley as well. “Now you’ve done for your¬ 
self.” 

An hour later, nevertheless, when all the others had 
gone and his time had arrived, he was in a coldly defiant 
mood once more. He did not even permit Cyrus Rorick 
an opportunity to speak. 


i66 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Em giving you notice, sir—that is, unless you can pay 
me more money.” 

The crass effrontery of the thing nipped all the old 
man’s suppressed venom. 

“Fifteen dollars a week, or I quit,” demanded McNicol. 
“Understand?” 

Rorick slid back in his chair and somehow got to his 
feet, as if to escape the pressure of McNicol’s physical 
aggressiveness. 

“Fifteen dol—!” he suddenly shrieked. “Look here— 
you’re discharged! All them monkeyshines-” 

“No, I’m not. I’m quitting. Give me my pay.” 

Rorick sneered. “Your pay, eh? Well, if you claim 
you’re quittin’, you ’ain’t any pay cornin’. Forfeited for 
breach of contract/’ He produced an execrable grin. 

McNicol’s experience as a successful collector of bad 
accounts now proved invaluable. With one rapid lunge 
he was upon his employer, wrenching his coat lapels with 
both hands. 

“Six sixty-seven!” He gave the fragile figure a little 
shake. “Shell out.” 

“Extortion!” peeped Rorick, but disgorged the money. 
“I’ll report this to the police. You’ll rue it!” He slid 
back into his chair. 

McNicol pocketed his gains. “Thanks.” At the door 
he turned for a final ultimatum. “And listen to this: 
I’m going to start a new business; five years from now 
you won’t be on the map.” 

Outside, in the corridor, he paused an instant to sniff 
appreciatively the odor of the place, acrid, sulphuric. 
Then he glanced at his watch—already it was after six 
o’clock—and decided he would proceed directly to the 
Foss house. To-night, more than ever, was a time for 
friendly intercourse with capital. 



MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 167 


n 

As he sat waiting in the magnificent parlor, he had an 
abrupt impression of the place’s silence. The Fosses 
were a noisy family; ordinarily there was a continuous 
chattering, a running to and fro, the bustle of movement. 
Now, all he could hear was the sound of the maid setting 
the table in the adjacent dining room. 

Then Ellen entered, a curious look of flushed anticipa¬ 
tion on her face. 

“How nice of you to come,” she said. 

McNicol greeted her awkwardly, his faculties groping 
for the hidden significances he could not help sensing 
vaguely. 

“Dinner is served,” announced the maid. 

Ellen’s casual manner was slightly overdone. “Shall 
we go out?” 

Still he floundered. “But—but you’re not going to wait 
for the rest?” 

“The rest?” She shook her head and laughed with 
palpable nervousness. “I hope you won’t mind. They’ve 
all gone over to my uncle’s. You see, Charley didn’t think 
you were coming, and—well, I thought you might, don’t 
you see?” 

“Why, I told him—” He gaped. 

His first concern had to do with the state of his hands; 
they were very grimy from the day’s work, and he had 
counted on Charley to furnish soap and water incon¬ 
spicuously, as he frequently did. 

Ellen diagnosed his distress intuitively. “I forgot to 
ask you if you didn’t want to wash. Won’t you just run 
upstairs? You know where Charley’s room is?” 

Simple, sensible, kind-hearted suggestion; yet when 
the prudish young man surveyed his countenance in the 
mirror over the washbowl, it was scarlet with mortifica- 


i68 


THE RED-BLOOD 


tion. Being sent upstairs to cleanse his hands, and by a 
young woman! It seemed grossly immodest. 

And then this subterfuge about the family. Pretty 
thin, he called it—everybody sneaking away, so that 
Ellen could have him to herself. Pretty raw. They were 
always inventing excuses for leaving him alone with her, 
but this was the worst yet. Flattering enough, in a way, 
for a rich girl to be hunting him so shamelessly, yet his 
deepest masculine instincts were revolted. 

“It’s the man’s job to do the choosing, not the woman’s; 
and, by God! that’s what I’m going to do.” 

What he had done, in fact. He recalled his rough 
wooing of Jenny Gough with pride, now. That was the 
way things ought to be carried off. Man, the pursuer; 
woman, the shy quarry. 

This final episode to-night was too much. It was high 
time for him to reveal the truth, even if he thereby 
alienated the whole Foss family. At that thought, he 
scowled into the looking-glass. Now, when he needed 
money so desperately; it was too bad, but they were 
forcing the thing upon him. 

“You do mind, I’m afraid,” said Ellen ruefully, as they 
sat down. 

“Me?” He affected surprise. 

“I don’t want you to think you’ve kept me home just 
out of politeness,” she went on, courageously. “I had to 
stay. You see, I have an engagement here to-night.” 

His slow relief must have been obvious, for she laughed 
a little. And that quizzical humor was one of the traits 
that always made McNicol slightly uneasy with her. Not 
that she was as bad as Charley; though her wit was far 
saltier and more perceptive, and thereby more uncom¬ 
fortable. And she was too keen, too self-reliant for a 
woman. McNicol missed the seductive note of inferiority, 
of clinging dependence. She made no strong appeal to 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 169 

his emotions. Rather fine eyes and a broad, capable 
brow; but her features were too large, her mouth espe¬ 
cially. 

Yet McNicol could not deny he liked her. The fact 
that she had fallen in love with him could not wholly 
affront him. He was feeling much easier, moreover, now 
that their time together was to be curtailed. Perhaps, 
just possibly, he had been unjust, and this wasn’t a trick 
on him, after all. 

Then the thing happened. 

“Can I stay till—” he began politely, and stuck fast. 
“Till somebody-” 

Ellen had preceded him into the parlor and now stooped 
to ignite the kindling wood under the logs heaped up in 
the fireplace. 

“Do!” she urged. Then, without rising, “It’s Mr. 
Ketchum who’s coming.” 

“That might almost be taken for granted,” he com¬ 
mented, for no reason at all. 

She stood up and faced him. “What makes you say 
that?” 

At her tenseness, McNicol suddenly perceived he had 
ventured upon dubious ground. 

“I—I don’t know. He’s here a lot.” 

Both of them stared a moment at the flame’s forked 
tongues, darting in and out through the firewood. 

“Mr. McNicol.” Ellen commanded his eyes by her 
tone. “I want you to understand something. Mr. 
Ketchum and I are not engaged.” 

“You’re not?” Some emergency instinct within him 
bade him express surprise. 

“No. But I may as well tell you he is coming here 
to-night to insist on a final answer.” 

As she made the announcement, Ellen seemed to move 
imperceptibly closer to him. Her hands she put behind 



170 


THE RED-BLOOD 


her back in an attitude of tentative surrender, and into 
her splendid eyes came a look that could neither be mis¬ 
construed nor ignored. 

A sort of horror came upon McNicol, a helpless con¬ 
sternation. He blushed again, violently. Then he seemed 
to see a path. 

“I thought you were engaged to him,” he said, lamely. 

The melting luminance died away a little in Ellen’s 
eyes. “But why? Wouldn’t I—somebody—have told 
you?” 

He shook his head stubbornly. “People don’t always 
tell when they’re engaged.” 

His meaning succeeded in communicating itself. 

“Perhaps you’re thinking of your own case.” 

McNicol nodded. “I would have told you, if I hadn’t 
thought you—” He did not look at her now. 

There was a pause. 

“I see,” came a steady voice. “And I’m awfully glad— 
for your sake.” 

Witnessing her swift self-control, her unbroken dignity, 
McNicol was thrilled with a sudden new admiration for 
her. 

Then the doorbell rang; and inexplicably, to his admi¬ 
ration was added a swift and piercing throe of regret, the 
puzzling and illogical conviction that in his honorable 
fidelity to his troth he was somehow making an irrepara¬ 
ble and enormous mistake. 


hi 

“Old Ketch has got her by now,” he said, half aloud, as 
he reached his rooming house and mounted the porch 
steps. And the certitude that Ellen Foss had put herself 
beyond his reach made her incredibly more desirable. 

Oddly enough, it had proved quite unavailing to re- 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 171 

assure himself over and over that he had done the right 
thing. That he had kept the faith, as any man of integ¬ 
rity must do. Exasperatingly, there continued to grow 
within him the premonition of grievous blundering; and 
when he unlocked the door and, in the light from the dim 
hall lamp, saw two letters lying on the newel post, his 
premonition became vivid to the point of actuality. 

It was wholly unnecessary to inspect the envelopes. 
The familiar Canadian stamps had told him instantly 
from whom the letters came. His mother and Jenny 
Gough, indeed, were almost his only correspondents. In 
his bedroom—shabby and slatternly, a depressing contrast 
to the rich comfort of Charley Foss’s—he slit open the 
letters and read grimly. 

Jenny’s beautiful handwriting first: 

Dearest Denny: 

Hope you will pardon my not answering yrs of two weeks 
ago, but have been so busy what with this and that, just 
couldn't seem to find time. 

Not much news, anyway. Lessie told me she hadn’t taken 
her music lesson this week because your mother wasn't feeling 
very well. 

Just think, yesterday was Lessie's seventeenth birthday. 
Quite grown up she is, makes me feel like quite an old lady, 
ha-ha Denny. Well we had a party for her last night, an 
apple-paring bee, and afterward we played forfeits, and what 
do you suppose, Denny, I had to pay more forfeits than any¬ 
body else, and they all said I must like to get kissed by the 
men, ha-ha. 

Well I promised to go sleigh-riding this afternoon, so must 
close now. Will try and do better next time. 

Sincerely, 

Denny’s Jenny. 

“Played forfeits”! “Like to get kissed”! McNicol, 
swept over with a tide of black anger, had a vision of his 


THE RED-BLOOD 


172 

affianced—her face handsome, full and inept. Then he 
thought of Ellen Foss as she had looked when she was 
congratulating him. 

The letter from his mother was equally brief, and far 
more illegible: 

My darling boyboy- 

Curious how the restraints she put upon her affection 
when they were together seemed to vanish utterly when he 
was miles away and she must have recourse to letters. 

My darling boyboy, 

Have been in bed with reumatism for several days, but am 
feeling better today. Lessie Gough just brought me some nice 
cakes and cheered me up the sweet little girl. Told me all 
about her birthday party and Denny, that pucey Ed Evanturel 
was there and just a little while ago I see him and Jenny go 
past the house in a sleigh together and I do not think that is 
any way for her to act. 

And how are you, my darling. I pray to God every night 
to watch over you and may God protect you from evil and 
shower all his blessing upon you my darling. It is cold and 
gloomy today and I am so lonesome for the sight of your dear 
face. Lessie was asking me when you were coming home again. 

Children all well. With great love from 

Mo. 

% t 

Customarily her letters touched him deeply, and he had 
even shed sentimental tears over them. But to-night, as 
he glowered at that first paragraph again, his only reaction 
was a continuation of sullen rage at the sharp turn his 
fortunes had taken. 

Ellen Foss now seemed the finest woman in the world 
to him; and he had given her up for a silly, shallow¬ 
brained, faithless hoyden, because of a foolish sense of 
duty, because he wanted to keep his promise. 



MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 173 

Suddenly he sprang up with a desperate idea, looked 
at his watch. It was nine o’clock. Ketchum had been 
there an hour already. 

Too late—he had lost her. . . . 

The perception that cut into him most excruciatingly 
was that the chief role in the tragedy had been played by 
Fate—or merest accident. The two letters must have 
arrived during the day; if he had but followed his usual 
course and come home before going to the Foss house! 
If he could only have known- 

Wellington Dennison McNicol, however, was not of a 
mold to stay supine for long, even when arrayed against 
superhuman agencies; he had an almost immediate in¬ 
stinct to do battle with the gods. Always, prompt action 
was his best weapon, and he was inexpressibly relieved 
that there was a train for Cartwright at midnight. 

IV 

It was almost twenty-four hours later when he stood 
in front of his mother’s house, watching Doctor Milk’s 
sleigh disappear around the corner into the darkness. His 
train, because of the inclement weather, had finally 
reached Drayton at seven, instead of two. McNicol 
found that the mail wagon had not even attempted the 
trip from Cartwright; and it was only by the greatest of 
good fortune that he chanced upon his aged medical pre¬ 
ceptor, who had braved the intense cold in search of drugs 
for an emergency case. McNicol’s estimate of doctors 
rose several notches: even a pretentious old fogy like 
Amos Milk w 7 as willing to risk his own life and his horse’s 
in a dubious endeavor to save his patient. 

The two drank several hot brandies in the Western 
Star barroom, then set forth. McNicol, in five years’ ab¬ 
sence, had quite forgotten the ferocity of Canadian win- 





174 


THE RED-BLOOD 


ters. Dressed as he was in city clothing, he suffered 
intensely; Milk, for all his years, appeared impervious 
by comparison. The brandy seemed to oxidize into the 
icy air without the faintest effect of intoxication; before 
they had gone half the distance both of them needed 
whisky from Milk’s medicine case. Luckily there had 
been no snowfall of late, the road was well defined, and 
the gray mare, half protected by her rough winter coat, 
somehow toiled on. Doctor Milk constantly brushed away 
the drops of moisture that impended from the end of his 
long red nose; yet even so, a tiny stalactite gradually 
took form and reached down toward his matted whiskers. 
He narrated the fate of one of the neighboring farmers 
who had got lost in the woods earlier in the winter, and 
whose body, when finally discovered, was frozen stiff, 
through and through. 

“He was that brittle you could ha’ cracked him into 
bits, like glass.” 

McNicol could believe it. The cold bit savagely into 
him; his ears and fingers had long since become numb; 
and now he began to feel insidiously drowsy. Pride not¬ 
withstanding, he surrendered, half fell to the floor of the 
sleigh, and let the ancient physician cover him completely 
with the bearskin robe. 

“There y’ be,” wheezed Milk, without undue gloating. 
“That ’ll set easier.” 

All at once McNicol began to feel warmer. He sat up 
again, with a return of self-esteem. 

“Want me to spell you off a bit?” he asked, with chival¬ 
rous intent, and gestured toward the blanket on the floor. 

“Bless me, no!” Milk had emitted one of his rare 
aspirate laughs. “Don’t you feel the difference? We’ve 
run into a warm streak. Ten degrees up already.” He 
looked up at the heavens which till then had been start¬ 
lingly brilliant with stars and three-quarters moon, but 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 175 

at that moment were already shrouded with faintly lumi¬ 
nous white clouds. “It’s as well we’re almost home, I’m 
thinkin’. There’ll be snow in an hour, and lots of it. 
Feel that wind.” 

Yet now, as McNicol turned toward the house, he was 
still soaked through and through with cold, and he was 
glad his journey was at an end. Nor was he sorry to 
arrive at this late hour and on such a night; the news of 
his return would not be abroad before morning, and he 
intended to make strategical use of the fact. 

His bleak little home vouchsafed no comforting aspects 
of animation. He tried the front door and to his surprise 
found it bolted; then, remembering that the front rooms 
were closed off in wintertime, he made his way around to 
the kitchen entrance, the snow crunching to his tread. 
Still no light. Inconceivable that his family had gone 
out. Then he remembered that most of the houses he 
and Doctor Milk had driven past were similarly dark, 
that Cartwright’s bedtime was scarcely metropolitan. 

The back door yielded, and he felt his way into the 
familiar kitchen. 

“Who’s there?” His mother’s voice came out of the 
darkness, and he could not help noting how courageous, 
how unafraid it was. 

In spite of the sternness of his mood, he laughed. 
There was a slight exclamation, the noise of sudden move¬ 
ment in the bedroom next the kitchen—his old room— 
then the flare of a match, and behind a flickering candle 
his mother’s face, incredulous, expectant, one high cheek 
bone reflecting the light oddly, one hand tweaking anx¬ 
iously at her eyebrows. 

“Yes, ma, it’s me—Denny.” 

He could not remember ever having seen her give way 
so shamelessly to sheer happiness; several minutes passed 
before he observed that she hobbled about painfully. 



THE RED-BLOOD 


176 

“Ell just be gettin’ you a hot snack.” 

“Now, ma, I’m telling you I had supper in Drayton.” 
McNicol became aware he must be on his way once more. 
“You’ll wake the children.” But he ate heartily, not¬ 
withstanding. 

His mother’s rapturous gaze suddenly turned curious. 
“And how could y’ find the time to come, Denny? You’ve 
not been losin’ your job!” 

He shook his head. It was not a matter he cared to go 
into. “No, but I’m going into business for myself, as 
soon as I go back.” 

She sighed. “I was thinkin’ perhaps you’d had enough 
of the States.” 

That was the difficulty, he reflected, about coming back 
to Cartwright at all: his visits invariably gave his mother 
almost as much pain as joy. And now he had to let her 
know, too, that she was not the principal quest of his 
visit, that her health was not his chief solicitude. At 
least, she would see through anything he might say to the 
contrary. 

He rose at once, nevertheless. “I must be going, ma,” 
he said gruffly. 

She understood instantly, of course, and the truth hurt 
her. But she had already had to give him up a dozen 
times before—as all mothers must; and she would have 
died rather than utter a complaint. Watching her un¬ 
easily—her strength, the close-knit fiber of her resolute¬ 
ness—McNicol suddenly thought of the night before, and 
Ellen Foss. 

“Be careful of the ice,” his mother cautioned him, and 
held the candle outside the door to lighten the way. “Go 
across above the dam.” 

Small need to remind him! He had fallen through 
more than once, as a boy, in reckless adventurings on the 
Conestoga. Yet he had need of some prudence, for the 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 177 

snow had now set in thickly; and once beyond the shelter 
of the house, he encountered a rushing wind. The roads 
were seething flurries of obliterating white. It was diffi¬ 
cult to believe, as he strove on through the blizzard, that 
he was not lost in some wild, remote waste—that behind 
this pale curtain that shut him in, three hundred souls 
existed in close proximity. Yet when he had left the ice 
behind him he fancied he could discern vague boot tracks 
in the drifted snow, as if some other bold pioneer had but 
lately preceded him up the steep slope. 

Within the poplar grove there was sudden surcease from 
the storm; and between the tree trunks, lights from the 
brick house glistened through his wet eyelashes. Here, 
at least, more sophisticated notions about late hours pre¬ 
vailed. 

At the instant of knocking, McNicol had never been 
quite so convinced he wanted Jenny Gough for his wife. 
The threat of rivalry, the intimation he might have to 
fight to retain her—his sense of grievance against her, 
even—made her seem wholly indispensable. He would 
have her, at any cost. Ellen Foss was a forgotten name, 
for the moment. 

Then the door was opened and he saw James Gough’s 
benign features; and beyond, his Jenny, her handsome 
face beginning to twist into apprehensiveness. Without 
a word he strode into the room; and from beyond the 
green-shaded table lamp Evanturel sprang up, his right 
hand moving swiftly to his hip pocket. 

v 

McNicol, with his well-defined theory concerning the 
management of women, intended to seize what was his, 
just as he had before, and defy the world. 

But this time Jenny retreated quickly around the table 


THE RED-BLOOD 


178 

and he found himself confronted by a pistol and Evan- 
turel’s morose distempered eyes. He sensed that his rival 
was badly frightened—frightened enough to pull the trig¬ 
ger, even. 

jenny screamed and fell limply to the floor. 

“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” implored James Gough, step¬ 
ping hastily between the two men. He, too, was greatly 
agitated; his pleated lips trembled; he cupped a hand 
about his ear to catch what was said. “No violence in my 
house. Put up that weapon!” 

Evanturel lowered the pistol a little, but when his 
assailant advanced again, instantly raised it. 

“Mr. McNicol!” pleaded the mill owner, “I beg of 
you-” 

“He needn’t be afraid. I won’t touch him.” The in¬ 
truder snorted contemptuously at Evanturel. “All I want 
is your girl. She’s mine—you yourself heard her give 
her pledge.” He glared at James Gough. “All I can say 
is, I’m surprised you’d be letting this scoundrel into your 
house. Is that fair treatment to me, sir?” He stood 
breathing heavily, somehow stultified because he could 
not transmute his indignation into some form of physical 
energy. 

Mr. Gough shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, as if 
the matter was quite beyond him. “I’m not the kind to 
force my daughter into anything against her will. It’s 
her affair, not mine.” 

Evanturel spoke tremulously, for the first time. 
“There’ll be no more forcing in this case. What I 


“What you say!” 

“Stand back!” Evanturel retreated a step. “What I 
say is, let Jenny choose for herself.” 

“Now that’s sensible!” Mr. Gough was for peace at 




MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 179 

any price. “Nothing’s ever decided right by quarreling, 
is it?” 

Again the belligerent McNicol felt manacled. Instinc¬ 
tively he knew, if the issue were to be settled by mere 
words, he would be at a disadvantage. He was no 
plausible debater. What he wanted was action—if pos¬ 
sible, a fight. For the moment, however, he was check¬ 
mated. Better to pretend an acquiescence, till Evanturel 
was off his guard. Then it wouldn’t take long to prove 
which was the better man. 

“Ed’s a nice boy,” went on the mediator, propitiatingly. 
“Why, you and him are in the same line of business I” 
He moved the chairs nearer the hearth fire. “Now you set 
here, Ed, and you right here, Captain.” He signified 
opposite ends of the semicircle. “I’ll set in between, and 
we’ll see if we can’t settle——” 

In their acrimony they had all forgotten the swooning 
Jenny; but now a faint moan from beyond the table in¬ 
terrupted the work of pacification. Both young men 
sprang up, but James Gough elevated an arresting hand. 

“I’ll see to her,” he said. 

McNicol observed covertly that his antagonist had 
placed his pistol in the side pocket of his coat, but that 
his fingers still gripped its handle. 

In a moment Jenny had recovered sufficiently to be led 
to a chair in the semicircle. Prudently, her father sat be¬ 
tween her and McNicol; to the latter, however, it seemed 
an additional affront that she be allowed nearer Evan¬ 
turel than himself. But he bided his time. 

“Let’s see, now,” said Mr. Gough, rubbing his hands 
amiably together. “Are we all here? No—there’s Les- 
sie; if we’re going to hold a family council, she should be 
present, too.” 

The younger daughter, summoned to the arena from 
somewhere upstairs, stared at them perplexedly, especially 



i8o 


THE RED-BLOOD 


at the newcomer, while her father explained. McNicol’s 
thoughts were elsewhere; he did not even look at her 
closely until she approached and offered her hand. Then, 
suddenly perceiving with some surprise that she was no 
longer a little girl, he felt obscurely moved to stand up at 
her greeting. 

“How do you do?” Lessie’s words were mere polite¬ 
ness; yet now again he was aware of her direct and very 
intimate look—innocently adoring. Yes, she had defi¬ 
nitely traversed the shadowy line between childhood and 
early youth. Her hair no longer hung in thick braids. 
But as yet she had none of her sister’s maturity; young, 
callow, touchingly immature she still remained; plastic, 
amorphous, with a shy emanation of sincerity from her 
light-blue eyes. 

“I’ll state the case,” said Mr. Gough, as chairman of 
the meeting. Evidently, the conclave was to be conducted 
according to parliamentary rules. “Both you young men 
seem to want to marry my daughter. She’s promised 
Captain McNicol, here; but I hold she has a right to 
change her mind if she sees fit. It’s too bad there has to 
be any difficulty; but things being as they are, what’s the 
best way out for all concerned?” 

Evanturel, his hand still in his pocket, spoke promptly. 
“Why not let Jenny say? I’ll abide by whatever she 
decides; if she takes him, I’ll promise never to see her 
again.” 

Their eyes pivoted to McNicol. 

“It’s a trick!” he blurted. “They’ve talked it over 
together.” 

James Gough addressed the convulsive figure at his 
right. “Is that true? Have you spoken to Ed about 
this?” 

Jenny, presumably the person most interested in the 
entanglement’s unraveling, yet surely till now the most 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 181 


passive, shook her head without looking up. McNicol, 
though he still purposed to have her at all costs, felt a 
slow tide of disgust rising within him. Hadn’t she any 
spirit at all? He recalled what his mother had said— 
how Jenny was the one beautiful stupid girl of the present 
generation of Goughs. 

He nodded. For the present—as long as the pucey 
Evanturel kept his right hand where it was—he must pre¬ 
tend to play the game. 

“Very well. Let Jenny decide.” 

“Good!” The pacifist chairman seemed greatly re¬ 
lieved. “D’you hear what they say, Jenny? They want 
you to choose.” 

At first she would only shake her head. Once she 
glanced at McNicol, miserably. 

His gorge mounted higher. “Come—let’s hear you 
decide,” he commanded, roughly. 

At that she tried to speak. 

“What’s that?” her father inquired, and they all leaned 
forward to catch the fateful words: 

“I just don’t know what to do.” 

McNicol was on his feet instantly. “Well, if you don’t 
know,” he shouted, “by the Lord Harry! that’s enough 
for me!” 

Evanturel leaped up, too, a glint of triumph in his 
morbid black eyes. His hand surrendered the pistol; 
McNicol had him at his mercy. But now it did not mat¬ 
ter. His savage loathing for Jenny—for all of them, in¬ 
deed—reached a climax when it flashed across him vividly 
that such was the reward for his high-minded loyalty. 
Ellen Foss—for this it was, then, he had given her up. 

“Fool!” an inner voice mocked. 

He seized his hat and overcoat, and at the door turned 
for a last scorching look. Inexplicably, his eyes rested, 
not upon the faithless Jenny, but upon her younger sister; 


182 


THE RED-BLOOD 


and it was still possible for him to be faintly surprised 
when he saw tears streaming from her eyes—her rather 
plain face informed with utter solicitude. 

“Oh, Denny! ” she cried out, and, running to him, threw 
her arms about his neck. “I feel so sorry for you I’d 
almost marry you myself!” 

The room vibrated to an intense silence; and then, quite 
involuntarily, McNicol was speaking strange syllables: 

“Well, that suits me!” 

Tenseness splintered into a thousand fragments. 
James Gough, delighted with the success of his effort to 
please both sides, advanced with outstretched palm. 

“Fine! That’s just splendid! We’ll have a double 
wedding.” 

VI 

Four days later, still somewhat astonished at himself, 
McNicol tramped the deck of the car ferry that was 
transporting his train across the ice-caked river from 
Windsor to Detroit. His bride was still asleep in the 
suffocating warmth of the day coach; and that circum¬ 
stance irritated him a little, for he had chosen the Wind¬ 
sor instead of the Sarnia route, largely because he wanted 
her to have this first awe-inspiring view of their future 
home. 

Impatient that she required to sleep so long, he started 
toward the day coach; then as abruptly paused, remem¬ 
bering his mother’s solemn advice, after the wedding of 
the day before. 

“Lessie will make you a lovely wife. But she’s so 
young—you must be very kind to her, and patient.” And 
he had promised. 

His mother’s relief at the unexpected turn of events 
and her frank delight had subtly reassured him. 

To Lessie, in turn, she had said: 


MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 183 

“Denny’s a good boy, but headstrong. Don’t try to 
hamper him. Let him go his own road, and most of the 
time he’ll do the right thing of his own accord.” 

In a way, he was just as glad to be left alone at this 
moment. The past few days had been so full of immediate 
exigencies he had had no time to think of the future. The 
harsh realities that lay ahead—the fight to establish his 
new business, to wrest power and wealth from an obsti¬ 
nate world—seemed vague and unreal; it was difficult to 
emerge from the fog of things sentimental, and focus 
upon the problem of making a livelihood for his wife and 
himself. 

He braced himself to the effort; and as he surveyed the 
city before him a thrill of masterful self-assurance began 
enkindling him. The sun had risen out of the tree-tops 
of Belle Isle and was shining down radiantly upon 
familiar eminences: the Michigan Central Depot, the 
Cass House, and nearer, those two other magnificent 
hotels, the Russell House and the Biddle House. He 
found himself proud of every church spire. What a pity 
the new city hall was not up yet; that would have been 
something to show Lessie, with a gesture of proud owner¬ 
ship. For this was his, all of it; his imagination, at least, 
dominated the whole metropolis. And some day his mas¬ 
tery would be actual, concrete. 

As the car ferry turned upstream a new alignment of 
structures permitted him a sudden fleeting vision of the 
store of Cyrus Rorick. He stared, slightly taken aback, 
then shook his fist. 

“You, too—I’ll be showing you!” 

“What’s the matter, Denny?” He heard a timid 
inquiry, and perceived Lessie at his side. Her hair and 
clothing had a somewhat disheveled look from the long 
night’s trip, and he was not pleased to observe the rem¬ 
nants of fatigue, the touch of pathetic dependency, in 


184 


THE RED-BLOOD 


her expression. This wife of his, this stranger whom he 
knew as yet neither physically nor spiritually, this enigma 
—was it possible she could be blighted with the fatal 
blemish of frailty? 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she quickly diverged. 

“You’ve missed the best part by sleeping.” 

He became gloomy, embittered. Lessie seemed an 
unwelcome appendage—excess baggage he must bear 
throughout the remainder of his days. 

As he trudged gloomily up the depot platform—his wife 
a foot behind him, submissively—the first soul he encoun¬ 
tered was Claude Ketchum, whose office was somewhere 
in the station building. 

“Good morning,” said Ketchum amicably, and stopped. 

After all, it was some consolation to introduce his 
former and more fortunate rival to the bride. It would 
never have done to come back empty handed, to admit 
that he had been jilted. As far as Ellen Foss, or anybody 
else, need know, Lessie had been his first and only choice. 

But old Ketch, the lucky dog! McNicol groaned 
inwardly at his own ill fortune. 

There was no air of felicity in the meek little man’s 
demeanor, however. Rather he seemed amazed. 

“Your wife—not really! Why, I thought-” 

McNicol smiled wryly and explained to Lessie: “Mr. 
Ketchum is soon to be married, himself.” 

And then the final episode in this incredible network of 
mischance occurred. Ketchum’s face became ineffably 
sad, his whiskers drooped woebegonely, and he seemed 
about to burst into tears. 

“No, no; you’re mistaken, Denny. My hopes—dashed 
to the ground! Neither of us will ever marry now. And 
I thought it was you-” 

He broke away from them to hide his unmanly grief, 
and quickly disappeared. 





CHAPTER IV 


HE HOLDS ON 

I 

<f X70U see?” said George Wickham, with something 
A very much like abject consternation. 

McNicol took the letter impatiently, with no sense of 
impending calamity. For his partner, it seemed, had to 
be apprehensive about something or other every moment 
of the day. If not about sales, then about the supply of 
raw materials. If not that, then the unsatisfactory ship¬ 
ping facilities. Most of the time, about money—the im¬ 
possibility of securing additional capital. He was the 
worrying kind. 

The letter was from the most formidable law firm in 
the city. 

March 13, 1870. 

Messrs. McNicol, Wickham & Co., 

Manufacturing Pharmacists, 

High Street East, 

Detroit, Michigan. 

Dear Sirs: 

We have this day been retained by Cyrus Rorick, Esq., to 
prosecute you for your theft of a certain pharmaceutical for¬ 
mula belonging to him, and for your manufacture, under said 
formula, of the preparation you are selling under the name of 
“Nargine.” 

This formula, Mr. Rorick advises us, was discovered by your 
Mr. Wickham while still in the employ of our client, some 

185 


i86 


THE RED-BLOOD 


three years ago. The law on this point is clear: any such 
formula is the exclusive property of the employer. 

Mr. Rorick has instructed us to afford you an opportunity 
to settle the matter out of court; but you must not hope to do 
so except by taking the following measures promptly: first, 
surrendering up all right to such formula and accounting to 
our client for all profits unlawfully made to date. Secondly, 
paying adequate damages for your wrongful conversion of 
his property, say two thousand dollars. This is, of course, 
merely a compromise offer, and not to be taken as including 
the full measure of our claim. 

If, however, we have not heard from you by Monday, the 
17 th inst., we shall move the Court for an injunction and the 
assessment of damages, and shall further lay the facts before 
the Prosecuting Attorney of this county, with a view to insti¬ 
tuting criminal proceedings. 

Yr obd’t servants, 

Buchanan & Stoner. 

McNicol reread the letter carefully, converging his 
brows into a characteristic expression of somewhat obtuse 
forcefulness. Three years had brought small change in 
his appearance; he had let both his sideburns and his 
mustache grow longer, till now they united luxuriantly on 
his cheeks. The scar on his lower lip still balked his 
attempts to conceal its disfigurement with an Imperial, 
still lent to his countenance a note of intimidating bru¬ 
tality. There was, however, a barely perceptible incre¬ 
ment of maturity about him, a slight effect of solidifica¬ 
tion. And this morning he looked a little worn, for he 
and Lessie had worked together in the barn that served 
as the new concern’s manufactory, until after midnight. 
Yet this fatigue was entirely superficial; he worked thus, 
usually with Wickham, every night; and each morning, 
after a sluggish first half hour, his furious energy came 
back to him as freshly as ever. 


HE HOLDS ON 187 

“You see?” George Wickham repeated tremulously. 
“I told you this would happen.” 

“Well, what of it?” McNicol demanded brusquely. 
“We’re perfectly within our rights. Most of your work 
on that formula came after you’d left Rorick; what little 
you did before was at night—on your own time. You 
know that, and Rorick knows it. What can he do to us?” 

“What can he do?” echoed the junior partner excitedly. 
“What can't he do? He can ruin us, that’s what! We 
can’t afford no lawsuit. We’re almost on the rocks, as it is. 
Maybe you’re right about the formula, and perhaps you’re 
wrong. You’re no lawyer, are you? I told you from the 
first it would be dangerous to take the chance, but you 
insisted, didn’t you? You know as well as I do Rorick’s 
just been waiting for some excuse to sue us—put us out of 
business. And now he’s got it.” 

His minnow eyes became misty with despair, his under¬ 
shot jaw quivered; he gulped down his sense of grievance. 
It was true the present emergency must be laid at Mc- 
Nicol’s door. Dissatisfied with the firm’s slow progress 
and the never-ending struggle to keep its head above 
water, he had been the one to urge taking risks, exploiting 
new fields, reaching out boldly for each possibility of 
expansion. Wickham was all right in his way: a hard 
and conscientious worker; so efficient and painstaking in 
his work of preparing the firm’s products and shipping 
them to customers that McNicol was entirely free for the 
more important affair of building up sales. But there 
George’s capacity ended. He had no aggressiveness, no 
conception of the business’s potential growth. From the 
outset, he had been faint hearted, fearful; it was only 
after weeks of persuasion that he had ultimately decided 
to cast in his lot with McNicol. At that, he had put in 
only a thousand dollars, to his partner’s fifteen hundred; 
McNicol it was, indeed, who had had to go begging for 


i88 


THE RED-BLOOD 


the balance of their capital—five hundred from his father- 
in-law and a niggardly thousand from Benjamin Foss. 
And it was McNicol who must not only be continually 
bolstering up his weak-kneed partner, but also blazing 
new trails, tackling all the firm’s rough pioneer work— 
the incredibly difficult task of making headway with a 
new idea, of slowly dispelling the antagonism and distrust 
of druggists and doctors who had always dispensed their 
own remedies—and at the same time looking after collec¬ 
tions, and finances in general. In short, it was McNicol 
who must each day be the life blood of the infant business. 

From such dismaying obstacles, “Nargine”—George 
Wickham’s one and only contribution to pharmaceutical 
progress—had seemed a way out. Had, in fact, proved a 
way out: in the past two months, McNicol had sold more 
of their first specialty than of all their standard products 
combined; orders were swamping him. 

And now this! 

For the moment nonplused, he stared at Wickham, 
then around the barn’s bare interior and at the meager 
equipment that had ravenously snatched away so much of 
their first capital: the drug mill, the ether still—purchased 
from the pucey Evanturel at an exorbitant figure!—the 
alcohol still, the hydraulic hand press, the ammonia appa¬ 
ratus. For each one he held a rare, unconscious affection, 
and for the medley of pungent odors. For the life of him 
he could not understand why the neighbors complained of 
the smell, as a nuisance. 

Give up all this, for which he had toiled and bled three 
black years! At the threat, his powerful instinct of self- 
preservation sent him rebounding to normal. His cheeks 
flushed with anger. 

“Well, we fight! D’you hear?” he told Wickham. 

“But how can we?” 

“We fight—that’s all!” McNicol stuffed the letter 



HE HOLDS ON 189 

into his pocket. “We’re no quitters. I’ll see Charley 
Foss this very morning.” 


ii 

A few minutes later, having assured himself that he 
had stiffened Wickham’s spine a little and that operations 
would proceed as usual, he left the barn and, traversing 
the few feet of intervening path, entered the small frame 
cottage that was his home. 

If Lessie had been at the kitchen sink washing the 
breakfast dishes, he would not have noticed her, so accus¬ 
tomed was he to their daily routine. He seldom really 
observed her at any time now; once the thrill of acquisi¬ 
tion was over, he had pigeonholed her as a definitely estab¬ 
lished and unexciting fact, and gone about his work. 
Business success was not to be won so cheaply as a wife! 

But Lessie was not there, the dishes lay in the pan un¬ 
washed; and he became aware of a definite surprise, col¬ 
ored with incipient disapprobation. For he had inherited 
the Cartwright conception of woman’s duties. His wife’s 
willingness to slave for him, to submit herself to him, he 
accepted as both usual and eminently proper. It was her 
duty to be his mistress, housekeeper, and emergency 
helper at the manufactory, equally without pay and 
thanks; and her occasional lapses, from illness and fatigue, 
provoked in him a very real resentment. 

“Gone to bed again!” he surmised, impatiently. That 
was a fine kind of a wife for a man to have, when his 
back was against the wall and he was fighting hard for 
life. He was indefatigable, himself—in that, he differed 
from the average Cartwright male—and he expected her 
to possess an equal capacity for drudgery. 

Because the spectacle of her frailty always affronted 
him, he avoided the dark bedroom and strode into the 


190 


THE RED-BLOOD 


front room where he kept his business records; and there, 
sitting in a rocking chair near the window, he found his 
wife. His bad humor increased. She had not even the 
excuse of illness, then, for idling away the precious morn¬ 
ing hours. 

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. 

No one would have dared tell McNicol he did not love 
his wife, or that he was unkind to her. In fact, he did 
love her, as one loves any dependent, in a half-contemptu¬ 
ous way; and if he was not kind, if he was not demonstra¬ 
tive in his affection, he was at least just. He fed her, 
clothed her, and housed her; he spent even less on himself 
than on her. He was faithful to her, he was dependable, 
and he had a future. Few women, he felt, would have 
refused to change places with her. 

Yet, why that perpetually unhappy look in her eyes? 
In three years she had matured, and she was rather better 
looking than the seventeen-year-old girl he had installed 
in this cheaply furnished cottage. Still, the air of pathos 
clung to her increasingly. 

When she did not respond to his question, he glanced 
at her more sharply and noted an envelope and sheets of 
paper lying on the apron that covered her relaxed figure. 
Lessie, then, had had her letter, too, that morning; and 
if her eyes with their unshed tears were any evidence, 
its contents must have proved equally distressing. 

“Bad news?” 

She attempted a weak smile of reassurance. “Oh no. 
It’s just from Jenny.” 

“Hmpf! Anything the matter with her?” 

Lessie shook her head dispiritedly. “They’re all well, 
she says.” 

He frowned and turned to his business papers. Jenny 
was not a congenial topic for either of them. 

“The doctor told me to come again to-day,” she went on 


HE HOLDS ON 


191 

in a desolate voice. “He wants to have a consultation with 
some surgeon.” 

He stopped short. 

So that was it! He understood her depression now. 
For Lessie was a childless woman, and apparently con¬ 
demned to remain so. It was their supreme misfortune 
—the bitter blight that was insidiously estranging them. 
The fact that she was entirely without blame could not 
suffice to check the unspoken grievance that grew up in 
McNicoFs heart. In him the instinct to propagate the 
race was strong. He wanted children—even now, in his 
financial straits; that he would never be a father fell upon 
him as a crushing blow. It was a woman’s solemn duty 
to be, not only mistress, housekeeper, and factory helper, 
but a mother as well. A mother, first of all. A barren 
woman seemed a repulsive thing. The circumstance that 
Lessie must feel the stain even more acutely did not soften 
him. Well might she shed tears. 

He said slowly: “What’s the use of running after fools 
of doctors? They can’t do nothing to change things. I 
forbid it!” 

Unexpectedly, the passive, self-effacing Lessie rose 
from her chair with a sobbing noise and ran out into the 
bedroom. He heard the door slam. 

Open defiance! The thing was unprecedented, incred¬ 
ible. His mouth opened a little; he glared after her. 

One of the sheets of paper had fluttered to the floor 
near his feet. Mechanically he picked it up, and his eyes 
chanced upon these words, in Jenny’s regular hand¬ 
writing: 

Dear Sister: 

What news! I am just able to write letters once more. 
Our second baby came day before yesterday, early in the 
morning, and what do you suppose? It is a boy and a little 
darling. Ed says he is the cutest- 



192 


THE RED-BLOOD 


m 

Charley Foss was not in his office. 

“No, sir, I can’t say exactly when he will be here,” said 
the young law clerk. 

Though McNicol might have known better than to 
count upon finding Charley at work, he paused at the 
entrance gateway an instant longer, quite at a loss. This 
was the first law office he had ever been in—a circum¬ 
stance that inevitably added to his disquiet. Through an 
inner door he caught sight of a second individual, whom 
he identified as Artemas Bigelow—the attorney who, 
because of the magic name of Benjamin Foss, had taken 
Charley into a nominal partnership. This Bigelow was a 
lawyer of considerable achievement and even greater 
promise, according to the Foss family. Certainly he was 
no shirker; McNicol instinctively liked the aggressive 
concentration with which he sat hunched over his desk. 
He had a definite urge to go in and see Bigelow, turn the 
case over to him. Here was a man who could fight Cyrus 
Rorick and the redoubtable Buchanan & Stoner to a 
fare-thee-well. 

But the fear of the unknown—the ethics of law offices, 
the chance of offending Charley—turned McNicol away. 
He had no money to pay legal fees; more than likely he 
could get Charley to do the work for nothing. 

Ill fortune continued to gather about him as the day 
progressed. There were few sales; most of the physicians 
he interviewed ridiculed his claims, often with open hos¬ 
tility; and somehow he could not summon up the cus¬ 
tomary resiliency with which he was wont to meet their 
attacks and disarm them. 

At Willard Weems’s shop, where he happened to wind 
up the afternoon, fresh anxiety awaited. He found the 


HE HOLDS ON 


i 93 

fidgety little apothecary in consultation with a certain 
well-known physician. 

“Here he is now!” said Weems, with evident spleen, 
and they both descended upon him. “That damn’ ipecac 
of yours. My daughter took some of it—been deathly 
sick all day.” 

“What’s wrong with it?” 

The doctor answered, with an air of gravity, “The drug 
is much too active.” 

Tired as he was, McNicol had to repress a very 
indecorous mental picture of the obese Miss Weems’s 
paroxysms. This was no laughing matter; when it be¬ 
came known, it might hurt business immeasurably. 

“Well, that’s the difficulty,” he said, sympathetically, 
a trifle relieved to catch an answering glint of humor in 
the physician’s eyes. “We’re working on that very thing 
right now. Trying to standardize all our extracts by 
chemical assay. Meanwhile we’re just as careful as we 
can be.” 

Weems fizzed with contemptuous disdain. “Careful! 
Why, all your stuff is rotten—either so weak it’s worthless, 
or so strong it’s dangerous. Your nux vomica—poof! It 
almost killed one of my customers. Careful! You don’t 
catch Cyrus Rorick putting out such swill. Tell you one 
thing, young fellow: there’ll never be another ounce of 
your stuff in this store. Tell you another thing, too: I’ve 
a good mind t’ sue you—an’ if Gertie ain’t better by to¬ 
night, by jiminy, I will!” 

Outdoors, McNicol looked at his watch and found that 
it was close upon five o’clock. Too late even to hope to 
find Charley Foss at his office. Yet the letter from 
Rorick’s lawyers demanded immediate attention. He 
decided to go to the Foss house; that seemed his best 
chance. 

As he walked, his mind kept sliding back to the episode 


194 


THE RED-BLOOD 


of the ipecac—a sure sign he was subnormal. Ordinarily 
he would have thrown off the recollection, as a healthy 
organism sloughs off disease. Willard Weems was right, in 
part. It was not true that Rorick’s drugs were more 
dependable than his own. But McNicol perceived more 
clearly than ever that the pharmaceutical business could 
never really grow until its product became absolutely 
trustworthy. Somehow, medicinal extracts must be 
standardized. This could be done only by chemical 
analysis, and McNicol realized a fundamental weakness 
in his organization—neither Wickham nor he was a pro¬ 
ficient chemist. 

His arrival at the Foss mansion forced the problem 
from his mind. 

“Is Mr. Charley at home?” he asked the maid. 

“No, sir. Will you wait for him?” 

In the parlor, it suddenly occurred to him to ask for 
Benjamin Foss. Here, obviously, was a good opportunity 
to solicit further financial help. An additional thousand 
dollars, right now, would be an absolute godsend. 

But Mr. Foss had not reached home, either; and the 
visitor sat down, taking but casual notice of the hearth 
fire and the once familiar room. He came here seldom 
nowadays. Not more than a half dozen times since that 
awkward and unhappy revelation between Ellen and 
himself. 

Then all at once Ellen was in the room with him 
again. 

“Mr. McNicol!” Palpably she had not known he was 
there. 

“I’m looking for Charley.” 

They were both mature, practical-minded people, yet 
always there fell an uneasy self-consciousness when they 
saw each other. But now, at the mention of his errand, 


HE HOLDS ON 


195 

another emotion took possession of Ellen, broke through 
the crust. 

“Charley’s not here.” She sat down, seeming very 
troubled. 

“But when-” 

“I don’t know whether he’s coming at all. None of 
us know.” 

McNicol chanced a quick look. Her features appeared 
more definite, clearer cut, than he had remembered; there 
were the first signs of an attenuation into virginal middle 
age. In comparison, Lessie was still a child. Ellen’s eyes, 
so fine, surveyed the fire sadly; and he marveled all over 
again that she had remained unmarried, regretted anew 
the splendid wife she might have made him. 

“I wanted to consult him, legally.” 

“Charley?” She smiled a little and shook her head, 
then moved toward him earnestly. “I’m worried about 
Charley. We used to be very close to each other, but 
now we’re out of touch, somehow. And I’m so afraid he’s 
just going to seed.” She had to force herself to go on. 
“He’s really brilliant, you know; he could do so much— 
and actually does nothing.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“It’s a tragedy—and none of us can seem to get hold 
of him again.” Her fingers intertwined tightly. “You’re 
the only person in the world who could really control 
him—if you would!” 

It presented itself to him that he had enough trouble 
without assuming the guardianship of a young profligate; 
and he was slightly annoyed. “Oh, I shouldn’t worry,” 
he reassured her. “Charley’s all right. He’ll settle down. 
But I’ll think it over, and if there’s anything-” 

The outer door had opened and closed, and Benjamin 
Foss now looked into the parlor. He carried a queer air 
of reserve; but its source did not become manifest until 




196 THE RED-BLOOD 

Ellen had left the room and McNicol began speaking of 
money. 

“Not one cent, not another penny/’ the rich man inter¬ 
rupted, decisively. “I happened to see Cyrus Rorick this 
afternoon, and he told me about the stealing of his 
formula.” 

“Stealing!” began McNicol. “But-” 

Mr. Foss would not be cut off. “Stealing—that’s not 
too strong a word for it. That formula belongs to Mr. 
Rorick—absolutely! Let me tell you, if any employee of 
mine did what you’ve done, I’d have him locked up. Oh, 
you may have been clever enough to cover up your tracks, 
but with me honesty is honesty and thievery is thievery. 
There’s only one right way to do business; the sooner you 
find that out, the better. Understand, I’m still grateful 
to you on Charley’s account, but I’m disappointed, 
McNicol. Perhaps you did it thoughtlessly—in which 
case, the sooner you make amends to Mr. Rorick and ask 
his pardon, the sooner I’ll be willing to help you again.” 
He checked McNicol once more: “No, sir, not an¬ 
other word! Honesty is something that can’t be argued 
about”—and strode from the parlor. 

Astonishing how his hot scorn burned away all techni¬ 
calities, all refinements. McNicol, as he crept out of the 
house, had to fight hard to keep from feeling borne down 
by enormous guilt. The structure of justification he had 
fabricated seemed suddenly to collapse. Simple honesty! 
All at once it became the sweetest, the most-to-be-desired 
prize in the world. He felt tricky. Presumably, Mr. Foss 
was quite unprejudiced in the matter; if the transaction 
appeared to him tainted with fraud, the evidence must be 
conclusive. Later on, it was easy to demonstrate that the 
wealthy lumberman had not been so impartial, after all; 
he had accepted Rorick’s version of the affair ex parte . 



HE HOLDS ON 


197 

But for the moment he seemed some stern impersonal 
minister of probity. 

Yet when McNicol came to the thought of making 
amends, when he visualized Cyrus Rorick’s sly, mean 
face, when he considered the abject surrender of his 
beloved business, he balked flatly. His gorge began to 
rise, his face grew rigid. 

“Never!” he swore, grimly. “By God! I’ll never give 
in! ” Every living soul might turn against him—the whole 
Foss family, all the druggists and doctors in the country— 
and he w^ould still fight on alone. 

Cyrus Rorick must have been ubiquitous that day, for 
when McNicol finally reached the barn, George Wickham 
also reported having encountered their former master. 

“Met him face to face, right out here on Woodward 
Avenue.” 

“You did, did you?” 

“And d’you know, Mac, he actually stopped and shook 
hands—just as if nothing was wrong.” George exposed 
his gums ingratiatingly. “Seemed real friendly.” 

“I’ll just bet!” 

The faint-hearted George looked hurt, then went on 
hopefully: “And he says, if w T e’ll settle, he might even 
throw off the damages.” 

“Does, ay? And you believe him?” McNicol turned 
savagely toward the door. “Well, there’ll be no settling 
with me. He can go to the devil!” 

The evil day’s final infliction scourged him when he 
found Lessie in bed with a fever, and the doctor and a 
nurse in attendance. 

She gave them a peculiar, admonishing glance, and 
then smiled up at him with inexplicable happiness. But 
neither phenomenon made an impression: he was far too 
disgusted to notice anything. 


198 


THE RED-BLOOD 


IV 

The two friends were in Charley Foss’s law office late 
one afternoon, three months later, McNicol walking the 
floor restlessly, his attorney seated at the desk with a 
dejected face. 

This was Friday, and the Rorick case was set for hear¬ 
ing the following Monday. 

“I advised you to settle in the very beginning,” Charley 
exonerated himself. “But no! You had to show how 
pig-headed you could be. And what did it get you? You 
couldn’t furnish an indemnity bond, and they tied you up 
with their injunction the first week. You haven’t been 
able to sell a nickel’s worth of ‘Nargine,’ have you? And 
look at the bad publicity you’ve been getting in the news¬ 
papers. Everybody’s afraid to buy from you.” 

McNicol shook his heavy head gloomily. 

“You haven’t any money to put up a real fight,” the 
young attorney pursued. “You wouldn’t have a chance of 
beating Rorick, anyway—with George Wickham giving 
that wishy-washy testimony of his. And Lord only knows 
what old Buchanan will make him say when he gets him 
on cross-examination.” He looked up with sudden recol¬ 
lection. “By the way, where is Wickham. You were 
going to bring him down to-day.” 

“Sick. Hasn’t showed up for two days.” 

“What!” Charley suddenly began laughing. “Scared 
to death—that’s his trouble. Bet you a dollar he’s twice 
as sick by Monday.” He meditated. “Of course, that 
might give us an excuse to adjourn the case.” 

“No, sir!” McNicol struck his hands together with a 
sharp report. “No more adjournments. I want to know 
where I stand. We’ll go ahead on Monday.” He picked 
up his hat. 

Charley rose precipitately. “Look here, Mac—don’t be 


HE HOLDS ON 


199 


a fool. I’ve worked hard to get this settlement offer. All 
you’ve got to do is agree to pull out of the field. No 
damages, no costs. And my own old man’s willing to 
forgive and forget—offers to give you a lumber job that’ll 
pay you twice as much as you’ll ever earn from your one- 
horse business.” 

McNicol looked very tired. “I’ll see you in court 
Monday morning.” 

“Then you’re a dead duck.” Charley threw himself 
back into his chair pettishly. “I’ve half a mind to quit 
you. And you needn’t come around here telling me it 
was my fault. God knows I’ve sweat blood over this 
case!” 

It was true enough. He had come to the scratch nobly, 
had become a paragon of activity in his friend’s behalf— 
and all without a penny’s compensation. More than that, 
he had been willing, in his loyalty, to brave his father’s 
displeasure; he alone, of all the Foss family apparently, 
had sided against Rorick. 

Even so, McNicol on his way out again glanced long¬ 
ingly at the door of Artemas Bigelow’s office. Charley 
was loyal, yes—but so pitifully lacking in aggressiveness. 
He had wanted to compromise with Rorick from the first; 
always he was predicting defeat, always holding McNicol 
back. He was worse than useless; McNicol felt he could 
have fought better alone. 

That was the disheartening part of it: he had to struggle 
on unaided. There was no one to help him. He seemed 
perpetually surrounded by weaklings—Lessie, George 
Wickham, Charley Foss. 

“O God! If I only had a good lawyer!” 

This incessant rain of adversities, this sagging of his 
fortunes lower and lower without ever an upward turn to 
give him courage, this sensation of being gradually 


200 


THE RED-BLOOD 


engulfed in a sink hole—this tightening reticulation of 
Fate: would it never begin unknotting itself? 

“Things can’t go on much longer like this/’ he muttered, 
without much conviction, as he shouldered his way toward 
home. “The luck has got to change some time.” 

Lessie, who seemed nowadays in a perpetual state of 
suppressed excitement, opened the door, and handed him 
a letter. 

George Wickham’s meticulous handwriting. McNicol 
opened the envelope and read, half stupidly, by the 
kitchen lamp: 

June 14, 1870. 

Dear McNicol: 

As you know, I have differed with you a good deal concern¬ 
ing various matters recently, especially the unjust things you 
have said about Mr. Rorick. He has been kind enough to 
offer me my position back, and I have decided to accept. My 
lawyers, Buchanan & Stoner, will attend to my interests in 
McNicol, Wickham & Co. 

I hope you will not think harshly of me. I cannot afford to 
go on working for next to nothing, especially with a man like 
you, who I could never hope to agree with. And I am only 
trying to do what is right to both sides. 

Resp’y your friend, Geo. Wickham. 

As McNicol raised his weary eyes and stared through 
the back windows into the darkness outside, he perceived 
what at first appeared to be a reflection of the kitchen 
lamp in the window panes of the barn, but what to his 
closer horrified scrutiny revealed itself as an unmistak¬ 
ably authentic flame within his beloved manufactory. 

v 

Toward the close of the following afternoon he stood in 
his back yard watching the carpenter complete a few 
temporary repairs to the barn. 


HE HOLDS ON 


201 


The scene was surely a dismal one—smashed-in win¬ 
dows, charred wood, adjacent fences demolished by 
zealous firemen, Lessie’s vegetable garden trampled into 
an ooze of slippery mud. He himself had had no sleep, 
and he was wet through and through with the rain that 
still poured down unceasingly upon the spectacle of 
desolation. 

Yet McNicol’s courage was still unbroken; his heart, 
indeed, was lighter now than for many days. The rain 
itself seemed ineffably sweet to him, because it bespoke 
a miraculous intervention in his behalf—the first hint of 
the beginning of a reversal of his fortunes. For last night 
in his darkest hour, when the fire had appeared beyond 
control and was threatening to spread to his house, when 
even the firemen had retreated in fear of the explosion of 
his precious chemicals, there had abruptly come, first a 
change of the wind to the southeast, carrying the flames 
away from the house, and then this stupendous torrent, 
putting to the blush such puny marvels as steam fire 
engines, saving from destruction not only his house, but 
the greater part of the barn. For a few hundred dol¬ 
lars, the carpenter said, it could be wholly restored; and 
in the meantime McNicol might actually continue business 
operations. Not a single item of his stock, not a solitary 
bit of his equipment, had been seriously damaged. 

And during the day there had been further portents of 
Fate’s relenting. Quite by accident he had sold two con¬ 
siderable bills of goods. More vital, when he hurried 
down to Charley Foss’s office, half in despair, to tell the 
news of George Wickham’s defection, he had learned that 
his friend was ill and confined to his bed. 

This seemed almost as providential as the rain. 
McNicol made up his mind in an instant to lay the case 
before Charley’s associate. 

“Of course, I can’t supplant my own partner,” said 


202 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Artemas Bigelow, “but you can retain me to assist him.” 

McNicol shrugged his shoulders. “What I need is 
somebody to go in Monday morning and fight for me. 
I don’t care how you fix it with Charley.” He felt an 
enormous reassurance at the very sight of his new attor¬ 
ney’s pugnacious countenance, and a great relief, as if 
part of a heavy burden had already been lifted from his 
shoulders. Bigelow, it developed, already knew some¬ 
thing of the controversy from Charley, and he grasped 
the details quickly. 

“I’ll work up the law over Sunday,” he agreed. “But 
offhand I don’t see where Rorick has a leg to stand on. 
As far as your friend Wickham goes, don’t worry! If he 
goes on the stand and starts lying, we’ll shoot him so full 
of holes he’ll think he’s a sieve.” 

That was the way for a lawyer to talk! And Charley 
and all the other faint-hearts had been saying there was 
not the slightest chance of winning. McNicol felt so 
grateful to his new champion he was afraid to speak. 

But there had been aspects, not so agreeable, involved 
in enlisting Bigelow’s aid. 

“Another thing,” he concluded, easily. “I under¬ 
stand Charley’s been working for you without pay, just 
as matter of friendship. Naturally, I can’t afford to do 
that. My time’s worth money. I’ll want a retainer.” He 
surveyed his client appraisingly. “Suppose you bring in 
a hundred dollars with you Monday morning.” 

McNicol swallowed, restrained his impulse to cry out 
at the outrage. A hundred dollars! 

Yet one cannot protest very effectually at a professional 
fee. Bigelow had him at a disadvantage. 

“All right,” he had said, quite as if he were accustomed 
to lawyers’ bills. “I’ll find the money somewhere.” 

Well enough to say—but how? 


HE HOLDS ON 


203 

And now, as he stood in the undiminished downpour, 
the carpenter approached him. 

“I’ll have my men here Monday, ready to start in. 
Now about the money-” 

“Don’t worry—you’ll get your pay all right.” 

The carpenter’s shrewd gaze was very much like Arte- 
mas Bigelow’s. “What I was goin’ t’ say, this bein’ a 
rush job, we’ll have t’ have special arrangements, like. 
Say you advance me one hundred dollars on Monday, a 
second hundred a week from Monday, and so on.” 

McNicol’s neck veins distended. This was sheer rob¬ 
bery! Lawyers might draw their pay in advance, but not 
carpenters. 

“A hundred dollars won’t bother a man like you, Mr. 
McNicol,” said the carpenter, with a laugh that was not 
quite ingenuous. 

For the second time, McNicol surrendered to the force 
of circumstances. He could not afford to have his poverty 
known. 

“Whatever you say,” he acquiesced to the carpenter, 
with a gesture of dismissal. 

But his spirits sank once more. Evidently the rain had 
been a false augury, after all, and his evil destiny was not 
yet ready to surrender its custody. Two hundred dollars! 
The sum seemed stupendous; it numbed his faculties. 
The firm’s bank balance, he had calculated, was twelve 
dollars and one cent, and there were overdue bills of more 
than a hundred dollars; it would be well nigh impossible to 
keep going another month, even without this additional 
crushing burden. Yet he must hold on somehow; not 
only that, he must press forward, retain the offensive; 
once his momentum slackened, his instinct told him he 
was lost. He had to have Artemas Bigelow. The barn 
had to be rebuilt at once. 

But two hundred dollars! All his sources of credit had 



THE RED-BLOOD 


204 

long since been tapped dry. His father-in-law? James 
Gough had already refused him twice. Mr. Foss? He’d 
be lucky if the lumberman didn’t demand his thousand 
dollars back. 

Some malevolent sprite within kept whispering, “This 
is the end.” He shook the rain from his hat angrily, paced 
to and fro in shoes so saturated they gave forth a faint 
swishing noise. Abruptly he paused, reached into his 
pocket, and counted what money he had. A sardonic 
grin came involuntarily to his face. 

Fifty-nine cents. 

Lessie rapped sharply on the kitchen window and 
beckoned; but he turned away, resenting the interruption. 

Then she opened the door. “Denny! Come in. You’ve 
a visitor.” And as he sulkily approached the back stoop, 
she whispered, “Miss Foss.” 

“Judas Priest!” He surveyed his damp and shapeless 
clothing. 

“You won’t have time to change. She’s in a hurry.” 

As he shook hands somewhat apologetically with 
Ellen, he was nettled to observe that his wife had followed 
him into the parlor. 

“Don’t go,” pleaded Ellen, and smiled kindly at Lessie. 
Always McNicol was caught by her unfailing graciousness 
to his wife. One might have supposed she would belittle 
her successful rival! For that matter, why should any¬ 
body pay much attention to Lessie? 

“In the first place, I have a message from Charley,” 
Ellen began. “He’s ill—afraid he may not be able to 
look after your case on Monday. And he wants you to go 
to Mr. Bigelow.” 

McNicol opened his mouth. “But-” Then he 

decided to say nothing. 

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you’ve 
done for my brother,” she went on, earnestly. “You’ve 



HE HOLDS ON 


205 


quite steadied him—just by making him take an interest 
in your case, by showing him you trusted him.” His face 
reddened a little, as she hurried on: “I read in the news¬ 
paper about the fire. Father said it was the wrath of 
God.” She smiled a little. “But I’d like you to know 
I have implicit faith in your integrity.” She opened her 
purse. “And in your brains. I don’t know anything 
about business details, but won’t you let me invest in your 
company? It’s not much—five hundred dollars—my own 
money. Later on, I’ll have more.” 

He remained helplessly inarticulate—could not have 
told her, if he wanted, the real truth about his motives 
toward her brother: that he had gone to Charley, not 
with any idea of helping him, but solely to save money; 
that he had already consulted Artemas Bigelow. 

Ellen placed the bank notes on the center table and her 
voice became almost querulous. “Please understand this 
isn’t a gift, or even a loan. It’s an investment.” Then, 
as if relieved, she took Lessie’s hand affectionately— 
“You must come to see me much oftener”—and a moment 
later was waving them good-by from the door of her 
waiting carriage. 

Lessie’s young eyes were triumphant, and he thought 
it was because of this swift and inscrutable rebound of 
fortune, the full significance of which only he could savor. 
Or, more likely, because Ellen had made so much 
of her. 

All she said was: “There’s a letter from your mother 
in the bedroom.” 

Automatically he read it: 

My darling, 

Poor Dr. Milk died last night, and I am writing you right 
away in case it might make a difference in your plans. Every¬ 
body says we must get in a new doctor here and what a fine 
chance for the right party it would be. And I cannot help 


206 


THE RED-BLOOD 


from thinking and hoping God may put it in your heart to 
come home now and Mr. Gough called here this morning and 
as much as said the same thing. 

He ought to have been able to laugh at this now; but, 
strangely, he was already slipping down into a mood of 
melancholy, a sharp reaction from his sudden jubilation. 

And Mr. Gough showed me a picture Jenny had sent him of 
her and the two babies and says she is just getting along fine. 

All well here. Be good to that sweet wife. Much love 

from 

Mo. 

P. S. Iam worried for fear of the kind of food you get over 
there so am sending you a package of bacon and good Cana¬ 
dian tea. 

Absurd! A tear rolled down his nose and he sank 
weakly into a vague and sentimental despondency. 

After all, what was the use of this interminable strug¬ 
gling? And what was it he was trying to do? The future, 
so assured and inviting a moment ago, began to cloud up, 
a black morass of endless strife and profitless anxiety. 
What did it all avail him—with that heroic mother of his 
desperately in need of his strength, abandoned by his 
selfishness to meet a forlorn and comfortless old age? He 
thought of her first valiant fight for him, her manifold 
sacrifices that he might have his chance—a thousand 
devotions. 

Then all at once he saw her bleak, prosaic features, 
and, unaccountably, another face, a young girl’s—Les- 
sie’s! The lamplight shone down on the two of them, 
just as when—in a flash he remembered—he had first 
seen them the night of his return from medical college. 
And the organ music! He could hear its tristful, wailing 


HE HOLDS ON 


207 

notes as distinctly as if he were still on the outside of his 
mother’s house, peering through the window. 

In the sweet 

By and by 

We shall meet on that beautiful shore. 

At that he broke down completely, in a welter of 
voluptuous sadness. The facile tears streamed from his 
eyes. Spasmodic sobs choked his throat and nose. It 
was precisely the phenomenon he would have condemned 
in another as disgustingly maudlin. Had, indeed, con¬ 
demned so many times in his own father. 

Some recollection of this checked his emotion at last. 

“Must brace up.” What if his wife should see him in 
such a state? 

The horrifying thought came that really he was enjoy¬ 
ing himself greatly. A little ashamed, he looked up from 
his wet hands; and with that, all his grief, his contrition, 
even the two spirit faces, disappeared instantly. But the 
sound of the organ remained. Those other manifestations 
might be insubstantial enough, the gossamery products of 
abraded nerves; but those doleful strains were real. 
McNicol, still infirm of soul, rose and groped his way 
toward the music. There, in the parlor—before the 
organ she had brought with her from Cartwright, her face 
illumined very much as he had first seen it—he came at 
last upon his wife. 

In the sweet 

By and by 

It was a fitting moment for her great revelation. 

“I didn’t want to tell you till I was sure,” she said. 
“You see, I disobeyed you that day and went to see the 
surgeon.” There had been sudden hope and the slightest 


2 08 


THE RED-BLOOD 


of operations—and now, “The doctor says the baby will 
come next February.” 

A child! He was to be a father, after all! A tre¬ 
mendous exultation, eclipsing all the other sensations of 
that fateful day, laid hold of him. All else was nothing. 
His depression had evaporated magically and all his peni¬ 
tence for the neglect of his mother. Even his wife, the 
author of this new felicity, had small place in his rapture. 

He squared his shoulders to the future with fresh 
courage. “By God!” he told himself. “That gives a man 
something to fight for!” 

Then he found he was grinning fatuously at the equally 
ecstatic Lessie. 


VI 

Artemas Bigelow pointed to the list of Supreme Court 
decisions. 

Affirmed: Rorick vs. McNicol, Wickham & Co. 

His client gave an involuntary sigh of relief. “And that 
ends that.” 

“Absolutely.” Bigelow’s air was negligent, as if such 
victories were everyday affairs with him. “They were 
fools even to appeal—never had a ghost of a chance of 
getting a reversal.” 

“Good!” McNicol was so elated he could not remain 
in his chair, but began striding up and down the office. 
He’d like to see old Rorick’s face this minute! And 
George Wickham’s! Spacious visions of the future glowed 
in his mind. The last barriers "were down; nothing could 
hold him back now. Through the window he caught a 
vision of the metropolis—the new City Hall, the scores 
of people hurrying along the sunlit wintry streets—and it 


HE HOLDS ON 209 

seemed to him once more that he dominated all this mag¬ 
nificent activity. 

With an afterthought, he asked: “Does Charley 
know?” Throughout the litigation he had been careful 
to make his friend feel indispensable. 

Bigelow shook his head. “Don’t suppose so. Hasn’t 
been near the office all week.” He and McNicol had by 
now become warm familiars. “Afraid Charley’s not cut 
out for a lawyer. I’ve been wondering, Mac, if you 
couldn’t find a place for him. You’re the only person 
I ever saw who could make him work. Why don’t you 
take him into your business?” 

McNicol weighed the suggestion and vetoed it. “Not 
right now. Maybe later. If Charley were only an expert 
chemist-” 

Suddenly he made for the door, remembering that on 
this day even a Supreme Court victory was relatively 
unimportant. 

“What’s the hurry?” Bigelow demanded. 

With increasing perturbation, McNicol glanced at his 
watch. “Great Scott! I may be too late!” 

In front of the Russell House, so great was his anxiety, 
he committed the wild extravagance of hiring a cab. 

“Drive like hell!” 

He wrenched savagely at the handle, but the coach 
door would not open. The driver climbed down with 
maddening lethargy and applied himself to the balky 
mechanism. 

One or two loafers converged upon the spot. McNicol, 
swearing impotently, looked about. There were no other 
conveyances in sight, not even a street car. Then he 
noted a third idler appear in the hotel door, and, as 
if magnetically attracted by the accents of profanity, 
approach the cab with unsteady gait. Evidently he had 
come directly from the bar. 



210 


THE RED-BLOOD 


All at once McNicol recognized him as one of his former 
tutors at Ann Arbor—that selfsame professor, in fact, 
who had taught him the heroic treatment for post-partem 
hemorrhage that had saved Suny Grizard’s life; and in 
spite of his irritation at the cab driver, and the slight 
repugnance that the spectacle of intoxication always 
aroused in him, he still retained enough of his old respect 
for members of the faculty to nod toward the newcomer. 

That sufficed. “It’s McNicol!” Most unexpectedly, 
Prof. Oscar McOscar embraced his pupil; then, as if his 
legs had grown tired, he sprawled heavily, confidently, 
upon this new-found support. 

There were hilarious comments from the rapidly in¬ 
creasing throng: 

“Hold on, old boy!” 

“Look out, mister—he’s goin’t’ bite your ear!” 

The cab driver suggested, tactfully. “Here y’are, sir.” 
The door, it seemed, had at last yielded to persuasion. 
“Better put him right inside, sir—no extra charge.” 

Together they hoisted the inert figure into the convey¬ 
ance. After all, this was the quickest way out of the 
mess. 

“Now let’s see you make time!” McNicol charged the 
driver. To the jeering crowd he shouted, “Get back to 
work, you swine!” 

The cab began moving briskly over the cobblestones. 
Professor McOscar at first was content to lie back 
exanimate and recover from the tremendous emotion of 
rediscovering a friend. His hat had fallen off, and his 
straight coarse hair—still jet black at fifty—hung down 
over his closed eyes with an effect of ribald bangs. The 
cheek muscles jerked spasmodically, and his mouth kept 
quivering into a characteristic brutal scoffing leer. A 
man of great individuality, McNicol remembered; ex¬ 
tremely popular with his classes, and yet feared, looked 


HE HOLDS ON 


2 11 


askance at, because he was a professed agnostic. Because, 
too, it was rumored he was a heavy, solitary drinker. His 
long, equine face, indeed, always reflected the marks of 
dissipation and near-exhaustion—and yet, discrepancy, 
an extraordinary, blazing vitality. 

In a moment or two he bestirred himself to a maudlin 
gratitude to his rescuer, threatened to become affectionate 
again. 

“Hands off!” McNicol warned, sharply. “See here— 
you ought to be ashamed of yourself—a university profes¬ 
sor like you rolling around in the gutter! What d’you 
fancy they’d be saying out in Ann Arbor if they saw you 
this way?” 

McOscar began to weep. “ ’Sail right, my boy—’sail 
right. Never going back there again. All through.” 

“You mean you’ve left the faculty? I’ll wager they 
kicked you out.” 

“No, no.” He wagged his head in solemn protest. 
“Mere diff’rence opinion ’bout morality—that’s all. Old 
fools out ’n Ann Arbor don’t know what lib’ral European 
ideas are. Narrow-minded, my boy.” 

“I don’t blame them a bit. And what d’you think you’re 
going to do now, seeing you’ve lost your job?” 

“Me? Back t’ Scotland by the first boat—where a 
man can do as he pleases.” 

McNicol, obsessed as he was by the major event that 
lay ahead of him, had an abrupt idea. 

“See here, Professor, d’you know anything about 
chemistry?” 

“Chemistry?” McOscar seemed affronted. “Five years 
at Edinburgh—that’s all I know. Chemistry’s the thing 
I ought to Ve been teaching all this while—only those 
damned old women—” He trailed off again into inco¬ 
herent anathema. 

“I’ll give you a job”—McNicol made up his mind 


212 


THE RED-BLOOD 


instantly—“provided you’ll sober up. And I’ll give you 
a chance at some real chemistry. Research work.” 

The cab stopped in front of his house. It was entirely 
futile, he perceived, to attempt to talk business with 
McOscar now; and besides, he must hasten immediately 
to the more important rendezvous. Nevertheless, he had 
no intention of letting this new opportunity escape him. 

With the cabman’s assistance he succeeded in convey¬ 
ing the inebriate to the barn. 

“You sit here a bit, Professor, until you’re in better 
shape. I’ll come back in a few minutes.” Then he turned 
the key silently in the lock and ran toward the house. 

Mrs. Lepper, the conoidal German midwife, was in the 
kitchen, washing surgical instruments in a basin of cold 
water. The towel she had the habit of pinning over her 
hair on such occasions gave her a businesslike air that 
somehow filled McNicol with the most calamitous fore¬ 
boding. 

“Is—is she-” 

Mrs. Lepper compressed her ample mouth severely and 
shook her head. She made no secret that she resented 
the presence of a doctor as a direct and intentional reflec¬ 
tion upon her own vast experienced capabilities. 

He stared at the instruments. “Will you have to use 
those?” 

She jerked her head toward the bedroom disparagingly. 
“He say so—maypee.” 

“But how is she—getting along?” 

The midwife permitted herself to look highly dubious; 
then, collecting the instruments, swept back into the 
chamber of travail. 

He sat down and tried to smoke. It seemed extremely 
difficult for him to be rational—inexplicably so, since he 
himself was a doctor. Had he not assisted heroically at 
Mrs. Grizard’s confinement? Not only heroically, but 



HE HOLDS ON 


213 


with perfect cool-headedness as well. No, this was quite 
different. He was in an abject funk. 

It helped him a little to look back over the long months 
that had succeeded Lessie’s announcement of conception, 
and to be able to remember his unfailing chivalry toward 
her. Before that, perhaps, he had not done so well; but 
since last June, there was nothing he could reproach him¬ 
self with. Not a single quarrel. 

Unless one counted their clash over the baby’s name. 
He himself was in favor of christening the child “Welling¬ 
ton Dennison,” after himself; but Lessie, with the usual 
pregnant woman’s caprice, held out for her own choice, 
“John.” 

Still, even that disagreement was nothing. 

“She can have her own way,” he resolved. “John 
McNicol—that’s not so bad.” 

Presently the fat jowls of the doctor appeared in the 
doorway. 

“Just come in here,” he summoned. “I need another 
pair of hands.” 

It required every inch of McNicol’s resoluteness to 
propel him into the bedroom. 

Ages later, it seemed, he hastened back to the barn, 
pale and exhausted. 

Professor McOscar had fallen from his chair and now 
lay full length upon the floor, fast asleep. Several min¬ 
utes elapsed before he could be aroused to a proper 
understanding of the splendid news. 

“A baby, eh?” he remarked, obviously attempting to 
do justice to the occasion. “And what’s his name?” 

“It’s a girl,” said McNicol, with slightly punctured 
enthusiasm. 

Oscar McOscar regurgitated with dignity. “A girl? . . . 
Well, that’s nice, too.” 


CHAPTER V 


JENNY 

I 

f I a HE banquet that celebrated the formal opening of 
W. D. McNicol & Company’s new west-side plant 
on the evening of July 15, 1875, was a stupendous success. 
Ninety-five per cent of the city’s doctors and druggists 
had attended the affair—among them, surprisingly, the 
fat Weems girl, escorting her senile but voracious parent. 
None of what the speakers referred to as “the fair sex” 
had been expected—Ellen Foss, one of the directors, 
having steadfastly refused to come, and Lessie being 
obviously incapacitated—and accordingly Miss Weems’s 
appearance had necessitated the abrupt modification of 
many of the toasts. But the occasion had proved a 
dazzling and original triumph, nevertheless, both socially 
and professionally. The guests had gone away more 
convinced than ever of McNicol & Company’s sterling 
worth and predestined glory. For these salient points 
had been stressed by each of the evening’s orators; not 
merely by the presidents of the medical society and the 
retail druggists’ association, but also by the eminent New 
New York physician, brought to Detroit especially for the 
affair, and even by the mayor himself. There had been 
speeches, too, from the firm’s own representatives. Oscar 
McOscar, just intoxicated enough to be impressive, told 
the story of his latest scientific expedition to Mexico in 
search of new medicinal flora, and briefly touched upon 

the subject of chemical standardization. Artemas Bigelow 

214 


JENNY 215 

made the best effort of the evening; but Charley Foss 
marred his own response by a disposition to too great 
levity. McNicol himself preferred to limit his opening 
welcome to five brief sentences. 

For him, however, as he stood in the now deserted room 
waiting for McOscar to reappear, the banquet marked 
far more than the completion of the new plant, gratifying 
as that achievement was. Ten thousand dollars’ worth of 
brick and stone, three hundred dollars’ worth of food and 
drink, a few fine speeches—well, it was enough to set the 
common herd gaping. But he, McNicol, whose brains 
and blood had created all this splendor, whose un¬ 
conquerable spirit it was that animated this material 
magnificence—surface things could not suffice for him 
to-night. 

Months and months of unshowy striving, of struggling 
against the heavy inertia of these very guests who had 
been so eager to applaud him to-night, now that he had 
beaten them. The outpouring of tremendous energy, the 
energizing of weaker vessels—men like McOscar, who 
were dissipated, or like Charley Foss, who were lazy. 
Even spineless men like George Wickham, who had re¬ 
turned to him in tears, begging to be taken back, and 
whom he had remolded into an invaluable subordinate. 

Miracles. And yet the fact that seemed most astonish¬ 
ing to McNicol was that his present assured success had 
eluded him so long. On that rainy June afternoon, when 
Ellen Foss had brought him her first five hundred dollars, 
when Lessie had regenerated him with the news of her 
pregnancy, he had deemed the victory already won and its 
rewards close at hand. Yet the days passed by, and some¬ 
times he seemed farther away from his goal than ever. 
There had been another fire—a disastrous one, this time— 
and then the panic of ’73, which all but scuttled him. A 
couple of lawsuits: one by the widow of a man who had 


2 l6 


THE RED-BLOOD 


been killed by an overpowerful narcotic; the other by an 
employee injured in an explosion. 

Since that eventful day in June, more than five difficult 
years had dragged by. The recollection made McNicol 
slightly skeptical of success’s capricious attendance, 
even now. 

“I wonder-” 

He glanced around at the banquet chamber, and its 
very actuality gave him comfort. So, too, the solid re¬ 
assurance of the new building. No, prosperity was at 
hand; there was no longer any doubting it. Within the 
last three months orders had doubled without any overt 
reason. McNicol, who still acted as head salesman for 
the concern, had made his first trip to New York and 
through the East; everywhere he found himself already 
known to respectful physicians and druggists. And to¬ 
day, even in spite of the cost of the new plant, there had 
been enough money in the treasury to warrant a first 
substantial dividend. 

His future opened out, as a tortuous mountain trail 
suddenly broadening down into sloping plains and fertile 
valleys. The days ahead glowed with the promise of a 
serene well-deserved affluence. 

Yet McNicol was aware of a queer restive dissatisfac¬ 
tion, even in this, his hour of fitting exultation. If he 
could have but read himself—he wanted no prospect of 
sloping plains and fertile valleys. 

Oscar McOscar returned to the banquet hall, still very 
much alight with the recent convivialities. 

“All ready?” He led the way to where his carriage 
stood waiting. It was he who was paying for the rig; 
McNicol, left to himself, would have walked home, just 
as he had walked to the plant. 

“Fine ’casion!” began McOscar, jovially. “Every- 



JENNY 217 

thing’s going to run downhill from now on, ay? Smooth 
sailing.” 

The idea annoyed McNicol indescribably. “Don’t talk 
nonsense! We’ve hardly begun to grow yet. We’re going 
to expand—drive ahead. The next thing is a branch in 
New York City. Maybe one in Canada.” 

“Don’t be going ahead too fast.” 

“Too fast! Splendid business head you got, Professor.” 

The effect of such contempt was to transmute Mc- 
Oscar’s gayety into a species of sentimental somberness. 
There was a long pause, then he ventured: 

“And where was Mrs. McNicol this night?” 

“Home.” 

“Home!” The word unlocked a freshet of Celtic emo¬ 
tion. “Ah, y’ don’t know how it feels, Mac, to be without 
a home. Look at me—wi’ no place to go but a vile little 
hotel room. A grand life for a man, ay? No sweet wife 
waitin’ iot me” 

“Good thing, too. Some folks don’t know when they’re 
well off.” 

They glared at each other, each mutely accusing his 
fellow of a lack of appreciation of good fortune, each 
secretly envying the other’s lot. 

McNicol perceived he had been indiscreet. “Oh, get¬ 
ting married’s all right,” he affirmed, but without 
enthusiasm. “The right thing for a man t’ do. I’m 
satisfied. What I’m saying is—’twould never set well on 
slippery shoulders like yours, my boy.” 

The chemist’s eyes were still reproachful. “A home, 
a fine wife—an’ children, too.” He sighed lugubriously. 
“How many wee laddies are there?” 

“None.” McNicol set his jaw in exasperation. “All 
girls.” 

McOscar coughed deprecatingly; he had touched a 
sore spot. “Well, then—how many lassies?” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


218 

“Three—and a half. Or rather, three and eight-ninths.” 
McNicol smiled grimly. 

“Three and—! You don’t mean you’re expectin’ an¬ 
other one already?” 

“Why not?” 

The inebriate still seemed staggered by this revelation 
of Lessie’s fecundity. 

“Well, now,” he said at last, as the carriage turned into 
High Street, “you’re certainly wastin’ no time.” 

“No.” McNicol was relieved that the interview was 
at an end. “All I have to do,” he added with a note of 
personal grievance—“all I have to do nowadays to start 
another baby, it seems, is to walk into the bedroom and 
just unbutton my vest.” 


11 

Despite not having retired till after midnight, he awoke 
at four o’clock the next morning, as usual, and leaped 
instantly to his feet. These first few hours were the cream 
of the day; it was then his boldest conceptions, his 
most fertile expedients, came to him. “By the time other 
men are getting up,” he liked to boast, “I’ve done a good 
half day’s work.” The idea had first suggested itself 
while he was in the thick of his fight with Rorick; and 
now, though his office was two miles away in the new 
plant, he persisted in the habit of spending the lonely 
vigil in the deserted barn. It was a time of uninter¬ 
rupted quiet, a time for constructive planning—and hence 
invaluable. 

He lighted the lamp and began dressing. His couch 
was in the parlor, because there was no place for him 
elsewhere; the three children and Lessie, the perpetual 
mother, were all crowded into the bedroom; and Mrs. 
Lepper, the midwife and nurse, slept on a cot in the 


2 19 


JENNY 

kitchen—an ever-present inmate, these days. The house 
was inconvenient and much too small; yet McNicol, in 
the full tide of his new prosperity, had characteristically 
given almost no thought to a larger residence. A new 
business plant was one thing, a new home quite another. 
The house, in fact, remained as bare and poorly furnished 
as in the days of his utmost poverty. 

But this morning, as ever, he was oblivious of such 
considerations. The phenomenon that obtruded half 
noticed upon his consciousness was an unprecedented lack 
of zest. His odd restlessness of the night before had per¬ 
sisted. He felt bored, middle-aged. The recollection of 
past triumphs settled down over his faculties smother- 
ingly. This morning there were no especial plans to be 
thought out, no fight to be made, no opposition to be over¬ 
come, no enemies to be routed. His long-sought success 
thwarted and baffled him. 

Or perhaps it was because he had been disappointed 
in not having a boy in the family. Yet that regret, keen 
though it was, was one of long standing; he fancied he 
had become reconciled to the fact. In any event, there 
could be no reason for this shadow’s falling athwart him 
on this particular morning. In fact, there was always 
hope of a variation. Lessie’s next baby, due in another 
month, might be a boy. 

“Not likely,” he muttered, and went out into the 
barn. 

Breakfast time found him actively disturbed over his 
condition. His mind refused to concentrate on business 
projects, and he had been unable to do any work at all. 

The three children were eating in the kitchen. The 
older two girls—Mary, earnest faced and delicate look¬ 
ing; Kitty, robust and phlegmatic—both at a low table; 
Becky, the baby, in her crib, engorging a bottle of milk 
rapidly and powerfully. Ordinarily, McNicol was an en- 


220 


THE RED-BLOOD 


thusiastic father, willing to undergo almost any drudgery 
on behalf even of female infants, buoyed up by a strong 
conviction that he had a way with children—that all 
babies, indeed, instinctively took to him. But this morn¬ 
ing the spectacle of the trio somehow irritated him and 
he rebuffed their advances. 

“Look here,” he assailed Mrs. Lepper, gruffly. “You’re 
not giving those children hash!” 

The midwife was not one to cower even to the head of 
the house. 

“Vy not? Vot is wrong wit’ dot?” 

McNicol entertained advanced notions about child 
feeding. “Hash—to a two-year-old 1 It’s idiotic!” He 
simply must quarrel with some one. 

“I haf alretty given dot hash to hundrets of children 
und it iss goot for dem. It make dem grow big und 
strong.” 

“Nonsense! I’m telling you I’m a doctor. I know 
different.” 

He had picked on the wrong person. Mrs. Lepper 
folded her ample arms across her even more ample breast 
defiantly. “So? Veil, perhaps you do not like my vay 
of doin’ t’ings. Perhaps I better go.” 

One of the little girls set up a plaintive wail. McNicol, 
raging inwardly, recognized that he had become enmeshed 
in serious difficulties. 

Luckily, Lessie had heard the altercation from the 
bedroom, and now intervened placatingly. 

“Never mind, Mrs. Lepper,” she soothed. “Just go 
right ahead. We’ll discuss it some other time.” McNicol 
found himself mysteriously propelled toward the dining 
room. “I’ll look after getting his breakfast.” 

It was one of his cardinal principles that the women of 
the household must at all times be conscious of his 
mastery; but this hardly seemed a fitting time for its 


JENNY 221 

application. He felt a little sheepish, but much relieved. 
Remarkable how formidable his wife’s power of tacit 
resistance could reveal itself at times! He looked at her 
covertly when she came in with the porridge. 

“The old fool!” he growled, by way of indicating he 
had been wholly in the right. 

“Yes, yes, my dear,” she smiled, “but we can’t afford 
to lose her just now.” 

Lessie wore a loose calico wrapper that concealed the 
precise degree of her disfigurement. Her cheeks were 
slightly sunken. But the outstanding circumstance was 
that her health was much more vigorous now than five 
years ago. She was no longer a fragile young girl. Inces¬ 
sant child-bearing seemed actually to have given her a 
new strength; she flourished on the ordeal of confinement. 
And the pathetic unhappiness in her eyes had transmuted 
itself into a look of almost tranquil patience. 

“Mrs. Lepper thinks it might be a boy,” she observed. 

McNicol looked up quickly. “But—but what makes 
her think that?” Even the slenderest hope had power to 
send a thrill through his heart. 

“Why, she won’t tell me exactly—but it’s some charm 
she has. A little piece of wood an Indian gave her. Every 
night she touches me with it and mumbles something 
or other.” 

He snorted angrily, his hope fractured. “The old faker! 
I’ll bet-” 

The front-door bell rang just then, and Lessie hastened 
to answer it, apparently glad to be spared his maledic¬ 
tions. 

She was gone for several minutes, and he had just begun 
to wonder what was happening when she returned, an 
expression of excitement and acute distress on her face. 

“It’s Jenny.” 

“Jenny!” 



222 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Lessie nodded. “Her husband’s deserted her—left 
her without a penny. And she wants your advice.” 

McNicol’s first reaction to this astounding intelligence 
was a fresh access of irritation. More people’s troubles 
dumped on his shoulders! But as he stood up from the 
table and followed Lessie back into the parlor to greet 
the woebegone figure of his former betrothed, his annoy¬ 
ance began giving place to a more pleasurable emotion of 
naive, glowing complacence. 

“I could have told her so,” he thought. And felt him¬ 
self avenged. 

hi 

That complacence still lingered unabated five mornings 
later as his train embarked on the car ferry and started 
across the river to Detroit. 

But now it proceeded from rather different sources. 
There was little of meanness in McNicol. The moment 
he laid eyes on Jenny and saw how broken spirited she 
had become—sensed how all her arrogant beauty had been 
stripped from her, how bitter the humiliation of being 
compelled to come to him thus—all his lively self- 
satisfaction had suddenly seemed hollow. One cannot 
long relish one’s vindication in the presence of such 
pitiful abject misery as Jenny’s. Yet for all his sym¬ 
pathy, he felt a certain contempt for her, as he did for all 
weakness. 

His present buoyancy, in fact, sprang partly from the 
very fact that he had been so magnanimous with his 
stricken sister-in-law. Together they had journeyed to 
Toronto to wind up her affairs. The handsome, irresist¬ 
ible Evanturel, who was rumored to have eloped to the 
States with some other woman, had left his business in 
the most shocking disorder; but McNicol was surprised 
to discover there were few debts. After a day or two’s 



223 


JENNY 

investigation he bought the business, paying Jenny con¬ 
siderably more than it was worth; and then accompanied 
her and the two children to her father’s home in Cart¬ 
wright. 

Throughout, there had been not the slightest intimation 
of their past relationship from either of them. Jenny 
was tearfully grateful to him, but no more; and for his 
part, he remained aloofly considerate. Once or twice he 
permitted himself to marvel that he had ever been in love 
with her, to congratulate himself upon his emancipation. 
Lessie, in comparison, was a priceless treasure. And the 
difference in the children: Jenny’s were fretful, dis¬ 
obedient; and the boy, the news of whose advent had 
thrown McNicol into such envious despondency, seemed 
a poor, malnourished little beggar with legs badly bowed 
by an attack of the rickets. 

Another factor that contributed to his present serenity 
of mood was that he had found his mother in exceptional 
health and comfort. His brother and sisters were old 
enough now to take part of the burden from her back. 
Naomi had married a near-by farmer and contrived to 
come to town frequently. Evva was still in school, and 
Glen a clerk in the general store. He liked them all, but 
perceived anew how unlike him they were; none of them 
harbored the faintest dissatisfaction with Cartwright, the 
smallest ambition to emulate his glowing example and 
venture forth upon wider, more expansive seas. 

And this morning, as he surveyed the long skyline of 
the city before him, he felt the prouder of his own spacious 
destiny. 

All these recollections had a share in his contentment 
with himself; but the major ingredient—what, after all, 
really put to flight his odd restiveness of five days ago— 
was the fact that he had been able to achieve a capital 
stroke of business. He had done Jenny a great kindness, 


2 24 


THE RED-BLOOD 


freely and generously—but McNicol & Company now had 
a Canadian branch! The idea of taking over EvantureFs 
equipment and stock of chemicals, of rehabilitating the 
sickly business and making it a profitable adjunct, had 
come to him in a flash; instantly he had made up his mind, 
and in a few hours the thing was accomplished. 

The unexpectedness of his exploit still fascinated him 
as he left the train and boarded a street car. 

“That’s the way to do things,” he soliloquized sagely. 
“Quickly, or not at all.” 

His felicity reached its apex when he arrived home. 
Mrs. Lepper, her broad Bavarian face flecked with red 
patches, met him at the door. 

“The baby hass come!” She waved aloft the Indian 
charm. “Gott sei dank ’■—I tell your wife it vould not 
fail!” 

McNicol felt only the slightest mitigation of his exult¬ 
ancy when she told him that Lessie had already christened 
the boy John. 




BOOK THREE: 


MONEY 


BOOK THREE: MONEY 

CHAPTER I 

THE MAUSOLEUM 

I 

"^WENTY years went by before the career of Welling- 
ton Dennison McNicol reached the novel and wholly 
unforeseeable phase that was to affect the remainder of 
his existence so profoundly. And because New Year’s 
of 1896 marks the real beginning of his new inquietude, 
the varied and somewhat extraordinary events of that day 
must be chronicled with some particularity. 

Behold him, then, still asleep at six o’clock in 
the bedroom occupied by his wife and himself on the 
second floor of the splendid new mansion into which 
the family had moved two months earlier. 

Lessie arose promptly, lighted a gas jet, inserted a 
curling iron in its yellow flame, and began dressing. She, 
at least, had not deviated in the slightest degree from the 
daily routine of those earlier, more frugal times. That 
she was now the mate of a very rich husband, that her 
children had all grown up, that she was the mistress of six 
servants, influenced her not one jot. Nor even that this 
was a holiday. 

But McNicol dozed on. Even half conscious, he seemed 
animated by an unaccustomed sense of deep tranquillity; 
and as he gradually emerged into fuller awareness, his 
tranquillity deepened into the profoundest of satisfac¬ 
tion. Satisfaction with himself and his stupendous suc- 

227 


228 THE RED-BLOOD 

cesses. Satisfaction with the texture and quality of life 
itself. 

Lessie gave her hair a final preoccupied pat and turned 
toward the bed. 

“Hadn’t you best be gettin’ up, pa?” 

McNicol raised his heavy form with a show of irrita¬ 
tion. “I am gettin’ up,” he responded, employing the 
loud nasal tones with which one addresses a partly deaf 
person. 

“You’ll be late for prayers,” she warned. 

Ordinarily he would have been annoyed. These pacific 
coercions of hers still contrived to stir up a form of help¬ 
less resentment in him. Lessie had a way of ignoring his 
authority, or countering his angry outbursts with a cer¬ 
tain deadly patience. And her deafness now gave her an 
additional defense: she could pretend not to hear his 
sternest commands, his soundest arguments. But this 
morning, so exultant was his mood, he could afford to be 
merely amused by her exactions. 

“I’ll be on time, no fear,” he assured her, and moved 
toward his heaped-up clothing. 

Lessie eyed him dubiously an instant more, her hands 
clasped in front of her comfortably stout abdomen. There 
lurked in her few reminders of the seventeen-year-old girl 
McNicol had taken to wife a score and a half years ago. 
Lessie was forty-six now, and no longer plastic material 
awaiting her molder’s touch. Her chin was double and 
sagged down into the slack lines of her neck. Her eyes 
were habitually apprehensive and noticeably pouchy. 
Her hair, though, revealed not the faintest flaw of gray, 
and there persisted in her face a look of alertness, of dis¬ 
tinct personality. She had lived half a lifetime with a 
dominating, intolerant man, yet she remained curiously 
unconquered by him. 

“Come, Babe!” she summoned. 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


229 


A yellowish-brown pug dog with a fat and senile back 
crawled reluctantly forth from underneath the bed and 
followed its mistress toward the door. 

McNicol heard the key turn in the lock. 

“You mean to tell me you’re still lockin’ that door 
every night?” 

Lessie’s mien conveyed unassailable prudence. “A 
house as big as this is a regular invitation to burglars.” 

He chuckled aloud as she disappeared into the hallway. 
Burglars! What next wouldn’t she be imagining? Poor 
Lessie! Pathetic how dazed she seemed in the midst of 
all the refulgent splendors of the new house. She would 
wander through the unaccustomed halls like a lost soul, 
trying to conceal her bewilderment, affecting, indeed, a 
certain brisk competence that defrauded no one; then she 
would suddenly disappear, and they would presently find 
her in the refuge of the bedroom, rocking back and for¬ 
ward in her favorite chair, wdiich she had insisted upon 
transplanting from the old home on Second Avenue. 

McNicol, on the contrary, felt nothing but the highest 
gratification over the new house—not that it was actually 
any more comfortable to live in, but simply because it was 
so much larger and more expensive. It had cost a hundred 
thousand dollars; therefore it enhanced his self-esteem. 
To the architect he had issued but two instructions: first, 
that it should be bigger than any other residence in 
Detroit; secondly, that it should be conspicuous. Or, as 
McNicol put it: “I want people to say, ‘Who lives 
there?’ ” 

These commands the conscientious architect had exe¬ 
cuted to the letter. The house, erected on Jefferson 
Avenue just beyond the bridge, was built of rough-cut 
granite, sufficiently high priced to dazzle any passer-by. 
It towered three and a half stories high. Little turrets 
jutted out at the oddest imaginable angles of the second 


230 


THE RED-BLOOD 


and third floors; and there were two lofty projections 
from the roof—one a square Gothic tower, the other sur¬ 
mounted by a bulbous dome and round minaret. In brief, 
the structure pleasingly united the finest features of the 
French, Gothic, and Persian schools with the best tradi¬ 
tions of our own American architecture: the full effect, 
if novel, was undeniably arresting. 

His hands-off policy having worked so well in the case 
of the architect, McNicol had delegated the problem of 
interior decoration to a celebrated New York art dealer— 
with results equally happy. Crystal chandeliers upstairs 
and down in all of the important rooms. A stained-glass 
window pronouncing its benediction upon the grand stair¬ 
case. Furniture of every style known to the courts of 
Europe—with a definite leaning, however, to elaborate 
carvings, scroll work, and other rococo ornamentation. 

“What about some nice objets d’art?” the dealer had 
inquired. “You'll want a few, of course, to round things 
out.” 

McNicol scratched his head. “Sure—you bet! Go 
the limit!” 

The art dealer had. There were two of what McNicol 
now carelessly referred to as Old Masters, and by his 
special request a number of English hunting scenes. But 
the triumph of taste found expression in a marble statue 
in the main reception hall, just opposite the front door. 
The half-clad figure of a young girl gingerly dipping one 
foot into an imaginary stream ; at her side, a gallant 
hound, frolicking. There had been some difficulty over 
this indubitable masterpiece: Lessie, who knew nothing 
about art, didn’t think so much nudity quite refined. 

Her husband had shrugged impatiently. “You got to 
be liberal, ma, when it comes to statuary. Ain’t I right?” 
he appealed to the art dealer. 

The New-Yorker tactfully refrained from taking sides. 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


231 

“Have you noticed, Mrs. McNicol, how greatly the hound 
in the statue resembles your own pug dog?” 

“Seems to me it does look a little like Babe,” Lessie 
had capitulated. Then with a note of regret, “Too bad it 
ain’t Babe.” 

Naturally one cannot have such gorgeousness without 
paying for it. The recollection of the New York dealer’s 
bill still brought a momentary pang to McNicol as he sat 
dressing this morning. 

“Art comes high,” he soliloquized, “but I guess it’s 
worth it.” 

As he adjusted his broad black four-in-hand in front 
of the bureau mirror, he surveyed himself with some com¬ 
placency. True, the McNicol of 1896 was beginning to be 
bald; his figure was undeniably abdominous and a little 
flabby. A McNicol somewhat coarsened and vulgarized 
by the passing years. In some ways, though, his appear¬ 
ance had improved. His sideburns, never becoming to 
his wide face, had been considerably abbreviated; so, too, 
his mustache. And the scar on his chin, formerly so great 
a mutilation, had now subsided into pale inoffensiveness. 
Despite the fact that he lacked all distinction of demeanor, 
he could not be gainsaid a very palpable crude forceful¬ 
ness. A thick-skinned, bludgeoning earnestness. His 
eyes ordinarily were not arresting: they had a suety, 
combative look, a certain obtuse mulish expression; yet 
their inexpressiveness was partly redeemed by his heavy, 
penthouse brows. Sometimes, when he was deeply moved 
or excited, his whole face had the power of glowing 
vividly. 

Abruptly a flicker of disquiet dispelled his naive 
vanity. 

“By the Lord LTarry! I forgot about that New Year’s 
reception this afternoon. Mebbe I oughta dress dif¬ 
ferent.” 


232 


THE RED-BLOOD 


His vest and trousers were wrinkled and shapeless, he 
noted. The shoes he wore were old and had been half- 
soled twice. For it was characteristic of him that his 
personal habits had remained simple and his wardrobe 
painfully scanty. He had not yet learned to spend money 
on himself. 

“Pshaw! ” His vanity returned to comfort him. “Guess 
I’ll look as good as any of them swells.” 

Even the room’s inanimate decorations could contribute 
to his self-esteem this morning. The photographs on top 
of the bureau, for example. First, a likeness of himself in 
hunting clothes, a rifle under his arm, proud male achieve¬ 
ment in his eyes, one foot perched upon the carcass of that 
selfsame stag whose head now embellished the dining room 
below. He glanced quickly away from the pictures of 
Kitty and Becky, the two little girls who had died in early 
youth; and his eyes paused, first upon the infant likeness 
of Beatrice, his youngest and best beloved child; then, 
more lingeringly, upon the latest photograph of his 
mother. 

He took the oxidized silver frame in his hands. Some¬ 
times his eyes would fill with tears when he looked at the 
photograph. He still idolized her, and it was his greatest 
tribulation that he could not persuade her to live with 
him. But just now his thoughts were written in a major 
key, and instead of becoming sentimental, he remembered 
her unspoken but enormous pride in his astounding 
success. 

“I’ve given her the best reward a son can give his 
mother,” he affirmed. “I’ve made something of myself.” 

A moment longer he paused in front of the mirror, 
enthralled as never before by the miracle he had wrought. 
Wellington Dennison McNicol—the millionaire, the 
president and principal owner of one of the greatest 
business concerns in the country, the owner of the most 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


233 


magnificent residence in Detroit—looked back across half 
a century upon the forlorn, fatherless boy, beaten and 
hunted; and gave him salutation. Looked back at the 
young man, fresh from medical school, leaving Cartwright 
to enlist as a soldier in the Civil War. 

Quite abruptly he saw himself once more standing in 
the cemetery, upon the brink of the escarpment. Heard 
himself once more taking the broad resolves that were to 
fashion his whole life. 

How had he fared? How many of his goals had he 
achieved ? 

“No, I didn’t marry Jenny.” He smiled grimly as he 
thought of his broken-spirited sister-in-law, now a per- 
h petual guest at his home. “But I did better—I married 
Lessie.” 

He went on to his second goal. 

“Yes, I’m rich. There’s no getting around that. Got 
sugar on my eggs now.” 

Then to the third and last. 

Was he a Great Man? 

“The name of McNicol is known throughout the 
world,” he said. And it was true. 

His gusto reached its highest peak. 

Suddenly he awoke to the fact that it was already after 
seven. Remembering what Lessie had said about being 
late for morning prayers, he hurried toward the bedroom 
door. Then he retraced his steps, having decided, 
in deference to the holiday, to put on his coat for 
breakfast. 


11 

As he tiptoed his way into what was officially known 
as the music room, he perceived that he was indeed very 
late. Lessie had finished reading the Scriptures, and the 
assemblage knelt on the carpet, each worshiper pros- 


23 4 


THE RED-BLOOD 


trating himself over his particular chair. McNicol could 
identify each pair of upturned shoe soles, each rear eleva¬ 
tion. There was his wife, of course; Jenny, the one-time 
belle of Cartwright—it was Jenny who was interceding 
with the Deity just now; Mary, his first-born; John, 
the older son; five women servants and the coachman, 
all regularly dragooned to salvation by Lessie’s iron 
insistence. 

McNicol exposed his own half-soles in front of the 
nearest chair as silently as possible. He did not wholly 
share his wife’s religious fervor. Church-going, for her, 
had become life’s greatest privilege; she surmised that a 
special corner in heaven was set aside for good Meth¬ 
odists. To her husband, churches were all very well; 
he went with her every Sunday morning. And morning 
prayers had his passive approval. Once or twice a week 
he would consent to read the chapter from the Bible, and 
at supper time he was equal to a short grace. But 
these long-winded prayers, such as Jenny was delivering 
—let the women make them. He certainly wouldn’t. 

Finally she was through. They all rose and filed out, 
the servants to the kitchen, the family to the dining 
room. 

McNicol felt his wife’s reproachful scrutiny upon him, 
and by way of diverting attention from his own tardiness 
promptly opened fire upon his co-delinquents. 

“Where’s Bee and Arthur?” 

Lessie shook her head. “Bee says she ain’t feelin’ very 
well. Asked t’ have her breakfast sent up to her room.” 

“Oh, she did, ay?” he blustered. “Well, she can make 
up her mind to come down here and eat with the rest of 
us or else go hungry. Just one of the fine ideas she’s 
picked up at school. But she ain’t a-goin’ to be coddled 
when she’s home.” 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


235 

His wife hesitated. “Well, mebbe I better tell her, 
then.” 

“Send up one of the servants,” he commanded, working 
himself up to a genuine indignation. “And Arthur— 
where’s he? He claims to be sick, too?” 

By now they were all in the dining room, but no one 
dared sit down while the tyrant roared. Lessie looked 
more troubled than ever. “Arthur’s still asleep.” 

“Asleep!” 

“Yes. He didn’t come home till late, I guess, an’ I 
thought mebbe he’d need-” 

McNicol snorted with angry disgust, then sat down at 
the head of the table. He was not, as a matter of fact, 
particularly angry this morning. Once having blown off 
steam, he felt he could afford to relax into rough jocosity. 

“Well, ma, looks like you’d picked a good day for your 
party,” he shouted. “Bet you every swell in town ’ll be 
here.” 

The prospect scarcely seemed to titillate Lessie. “I 
don’t know, I’m sure. I do hope everything will go all 
right.” 

“You act like you were scared stiff already,” he laughed, 
condescendingly. “What’s the matter? ’Fraid people ’ll 
bite you, or something?” 

“No, but-” 

“Well, now, just looka here. They’s nobody in Detroit 
any better ’n we are, even if we don’t put on airs. Pre¬ 
cious few as good. I could buy out the whole bunch 
t’-morrow, and never feel it.” 

His attention was distracted by the maid’s entrance 
with Aunt Jenny’s special breakfast. 

“Say, Jen, why don’t you quit eatin’ such slops? Put 
a little real stuff inside you, and you’d feel somethin’ like. 
A bit of ham and eggs now?” 

“No, thank you,” Jenny repeated, not without pride 




THE RED-BLOOD 


236 

in her infirmity. For ten years she had eaten nothing but 
oatmeal gruel and crackers; and of late had dispensed 
with the crackers as not agreeing with her. “I know what 
I can digest better ’n anybody else, I reckon. Ham an’ 
eggs indeed!” 

“Ham and eggs won’t hurt no one,” McNicol asserted 
with conviction. But he forbore to press the point. 
Toward Jenny he cherished no emotion stronger than a 
certain easy contempt. To think what she might have 
been now—his wife, the mistress of all this splendor— 
save for her gross stupidity! Occasionally he would catch 
her watching him with the oddest and most inscrutable 
of expressions in her faded eyes, and he wondered how 
many times she must have bitterly regretted the moment 
of folly that had wrecked her life and cast her upon the 
generosity of the man she had broken faith with. A queer 
trick of Fate! McNicol felt sorry for her; she was almost 
penniless now; both her children had turned out badly. 

He turned to his elder daughter, on the other side of the 
table. 

“Pass your plate, then.” 

Mary complied. “Just eggs this morning, please. No 
meat.” 

“No meat!” McNicol glared as if personally affronted. 

“Never any meat for me. From to-day on I’m a vege¬ 
tarian.” 

It is difficult to describe the effect of this simple pro¬ 
nouncement upon McNicol’s equanimity. Essentially he 
was a conservative, conventional being to the uttermost 
fiber. What other people said and did took on for him, 
quite unwittingly, the semblance of inviolability. He 
hated anything that was different, newfangled—what he 
called fads. And Mary was always taking up some 
strange new fad. 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


237 

“A vegetarian!” he gasped. “And what’s the reason 
for that?” 

“Because it’s wrong to slaughter thousands of defense¬ 
less animals every year, just for food. It’s unnecessary 
and it’s cruel!” 

Mary voiced these heretical convictions with an air of 
frantic courage, quite as if she expected to be sent to the 
stake forthwith. Tears welled up in her gray eyes; her 
sensitive mouth quivered. She awaited her martyrdom 
with passive defiance. 

The sole question was what form the punishment would 
take. McNicol felt outraged, the more so because he had 
detected her swift glance up at the stag’s head above him. 
She was daring to accuse him, her own father, of cruelty, 
too—just because he occasionally went hunting. His 
first instinct was to send her from the table. A vege¬ 
tarian! What next? Mary was an alien to him; he 
understood her less than any of the others of his strange 
brood. Even as a little girl she had been odd—a sedate, 
solemn-faced sprite to whom childhood always seemed 
somehow an indignity. And here she was now, a mature 
woman of twenty-four—practically twenty-five—still un¬ 
married and on his hands. Why, she ought to have three 
or four children of her own by this time! And she could 
have had: Mary wasn’t bad looking; several men had 
wanted her. But always she kept them at a distance be¬ 
cause of some abnormal fastidiousness, some strange rest¬ 
lessness. Uneasy, dissatisfied, a potential trouble maker 
—born unhappily a generation ahead of her time. No one 
could comprehend her. Except Ellen Foss, possibly. 

As McNicol mustered his indignation, however, there 
came a diversion. No one else would have ventured to 
intervene at such a crisis; but John, the skeleton in the 
family closet, pushed his plate toward his father with a 
loud guffaw. 


THE RED-BLOOD 


238 

“Give me her ham, pa. I’ll take it.” 

At this counter-irritant McNicol’s expression changed 
from blazing anger to a species of sorrowful, brooding 
hostility; for if Mary was inexplicable, John was quite 
inescapably “queer.” Not an imbecile, of course, and 
entirely harmless—but not quite right in his head. There 
had been nothing wrong with him at first, except his odd, 
lopsided face. Always, in fact, he had been a “good” boy, 
perfectly obedient and rather bright in school. McNicol 
had put him in the factory at fifteen, and it was shortly 
thereafter that his present obscure malady had begun to 
manifest itself—these peculiar, meaningless explosions of 
mirth, an occasional tendency to fall down, fits of fainting 
and wild incoherent jabbering. In brief, poor John had 
abruptly developed into what was more or less a common¬ 
place in those days—the family’s one defective child. 
His father had been obliged to take him out of the fac¬ 
tory; he did nothing now except wander vacuously about 
the house, read weird books, sleep a good deal, sometimes 
go out for a walk 

If McNicol had been to blame, if he had sown his share 
of wild oats in his youth, the tragedy might have been 
easier of endurance, he told himself. But that this thing 
should happen to him—the upright, the chaste—seemed 
intolerable. Bitterly he speculated about that dissolute 
father of his. 

John now emitted a second vociferous laugh. “Won’t 
cost near so much t’ feed sister if she’s turned vegetarian.” 

“Won’t, ay?” McNicol fumed as he filled his son’s 
plate. “Well, it costs enough for two people, the amount 
you eat.” 

It was one of his acutest grievances that John’s appetite 
seemed to grow with his disease. He had, indeed, never 
been so robust, physically. 

Then, as if to cap the meal’s exasperations, the figure 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


239 


of Arthur, the second son, came into view through the 
doorway and approached the table with an obviously 
slinking gait. 

In some ways Arthur was his father's greatest chagrin. 
Mary was a girl, and didn’t count much, one way or the 
other. John? A crushing enough disappointment, but, 
after all, his affliction was not his fault. But Arthur! He 
had always been a bad boy, stubborn, disobedient, willful. 
In most ways he was more like his father than any of 
the rest. In appearance, even. But the similarity seemed 
to arouse the deepest of antipathy between them. Twice, 
as a boy, Arthur had run away from home after being 
whipped. Now, at nineteen, he worked sullenly, against 
his will, in the factory. Went out nights, nobody knew 
where—probably to some low saloon, or worse. Came 
home so late he couldn't even get to breakfast on time. 

It was too much. McXicol's wrath, dammed up thus 
far, burst through. 

“Git outa here! ” he bellowed to his son. “If you're too 
lazy to get up when other folks do, you can go without 
your breakfast! ” 


m 

A little later McXicol repaired to the music room, 
pulled off his coat, drew a cuspidor within target range, 
sat down in a deep leather armchair, and prepared to 
enjoy the offices of his quill toothpick. 

There "was within him an admirable capacity for self- 
healing. Already the vexations of breakfast time had 
automatically erased themselves from his attention; his 
mood bounded resiliently to his unrestrained satisfaction 
of the earlier morning. He was alone in the room; but 
he could hear Lessie in the spacious hall outside, confer¬ 
ring with the florist and his two assistants. Even at this 


240 


THE RED-BLOOD 


hour the whole household had begun to rotate centripetally 
about the glittering pageant of the afternoon. From where 
he reclined McNicol could envisage a crew of men erect¬ 
ing a long awning from the street to the front porch of 
the house: and the spectacle reinforced his contentment. 

The interval of lethargic repletion, of post-prandial 
coma, was at hand. He himself had no duties to perform, 
no part to play in making ready the resplendent festival. 
He could rest in undisturbed ease—and not merely this 
holiday morning, but even' morning hereafter, if he chose; 
for with the last day of the old year, he had retired from 
active participation in the business. 

“Not that I'm goin’ to do much loafin’,” he defended 
himself. He was still president of the company and he 
intended to keep closely in touch with its management. 
Various other business projects beckoned him invitingly, 
and this summer he and Lessie were going to Europe. 

“Just enough work to keep sweet,” he argued. “Guess 
I've earned the right to take things a bit easy.” 

He glanced blissfully over the music room's varied ele¬ 
gances, and out into the reception hallway. By craning 
his neck he could just environ the delectable marble 
maiden and her noble hound. That sufficed; he bit off 
the end of his cigar, blew the tobacco dust through it, and 
lighted a match. 

As he spread out the morning newspaper his younger 
daughter, Beatrice, stepped briskly into the room. 

“Hello, papa!” 

That “papa" alone would have marked her off as a 
superior, refined product. The other children said “pa”, 
or “father’’; but Beatrice, the bright particular flower of 
the family, had not spent the last three months in a New 
York finishing school for nothing. She knew the better 
deportment, the correct thing—not merely in such super¬ 
ficial matters as “papa,” but in the larger aspects of living 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


241 


as well. She had learned, for example, how to “get her¬ 
self up.” Her dress this morning was of a flaming scarlet 
silk that made even more striking her vivid, handsome 
face, her small, vibrant figure. Already, at seventeen, 
she had a dangerous enticing quality: men of all sorts 
and as:es “went crazv" over her—and certain!v Beatrice 
did nothing to dampen their passion. 

“MorninV McXicoi answered, uncertainly. Beatrice 
was his favorite, yet now he remembered her delinquency 
in not coming to breakfast. He had punished Arthur for 
the same offense, and he meant to be an impartial parent. 

“A pretty time to be gettin' downstairs. " he fumed. 
‘‘'Ain't vou ashamed of yourself?” 

m * 

“Oh. papa, please don't say ’ain't' any more. It sounds 
so vulgar.” 

“Vulgar, ay?" The young hussy! Trying to give her¬ 
self airs. ‘*Looka here, don't vou trv to come anv of 
them Xew York notions on me. 'cause I won't stand it, 
not for a minute. Guess I don't speak no different from 
anybody else around here.” 

“Oh. but you co. papa! You may not realize it. but 
you've grown awfully careless about vour grammar.'' 

Just then Mary intervened hesitantly: “I forgot to tell 
vou. father, but I've engaged Mr. Pasco to sins at the 
reception this afternoon.'' 

McXicoi surveved her testilv. ”What did vou want to 

^ ^ 

go an' do that for? ' 

“Well,” Mary faltered, “mother and I agreed it would 
be nice. Other people have music at such affairs ' 

He picked up his paper. “Who is this—what d’you 
call him?—Tobasco?" The witticism almost restored his 
good humor. 

“Don't you remember? He came here and sang for us 
one night last fall. A vocal teacher, he is.” 

“Oh, him! That dago you wanted to take lessons 



242 


THE RED-BLOOD 


from?” He washed his hands of the enterprise. “Oh, 
well, if you and your ma want him to come-” 

“Who’s Mr. Pasco, sis?” Beatrice demanded. 

Mary’s tone was cold. “You don’t know him.” 

“I’ll just bet he’s a beau of yours. I’ll bet you’re in love 
with him.” She giggled maliciously. “Oh, Mary!” 

“What’s that?” McNicol was horrified. “An Eyetal- 
ian!” 

“Nonsense!” Mary denied, her face coloring a little. 
“However, what I wanted to ask of you, father, was to be 
sure to send Mr. Pasco a check for ten dollars.” 

“Ten dollars! Just for cornin’ here and singinM No 
sir, not one cent outa me—” But Mary had gone. 

Presently Bee went to the piano and herself began to 
sing: 

“Gin a body meet a body 
Cornin’ thro’ the rye—” 

Once more McNicol relaxed into perfect contentment. 
This was something like! Beatrice might not be much to 
boast of either as a pianist or vocalist, yet one Scotch 
song from her lips was worth more to him than all the 
classical music in the world. 

“Yet a’ the lads they smile at me 
When cornin’ thro’ the rye.” 

He closed his eyes, half ashamed of the tears that filled 
them. There was a girl for you! Pretty as a picture, 
a regular high-stepper—yet not too puffed up to play the 
kind of music he liked. 

This morning, however, all his intervals of tranquillity 
seemed doomed to abrupt invasion. As Bee finished the 
song there issued from the far corner of the room a jarring 
outburst of applause, and he perceived that John had also 
been enjoying the music. 



THE MAUSOLEUM 


243 


Bee’s somewhat willful features clouded with resent¬ 
ment and she confronted her father determinedly. “What 
in the world are we going to do with him? He’s simply 
a disgrace to all of us! How can we ever amount to any¬ 
thing socially as long as he’s around?” 

This caustic arraignment, delivered in rapid staccato 
syllables, dazed McNicol. What, indeed, was there to 
say? She had thrust at one of his sorest perplexities, and 
he had no answer. 

Some sense of pity visited him, nevertheless. “You 
go, John.” 

The defective bestirred himself reluctantly. “I don’t 
want to go.” 

“Hurry on, now—clear out.” 

“But why do I have to go, pa? What have I done?” 
There was an expression of pathetic bewilderment on 
John’s face. “What are you goin’ to do with me?” 

McNicol half arose, with a threatening movement; 
then, as his son fled the room, sank back wearily. 

“Don’t you see, papa?” went on Beatrice, implacably. 
“I’m as sorry for poor Johnny as any one else, but he just 
can’t be allowed loose any longer.” 

“But what-” 

“Lock him up—that’s what! Send him to an asylum, 
the way other families do.” 

He shook his head sadly. “He’s not that bad off. Per¬ 
fectly harmless, ain’t he?” 

“No, he’s not, either! Anyway, something’s got to be 
done with him this afternoon. There’ll be lots of nice 
people here—people I want to stand in with. Well, just 
supposing John starts acting up. You can’t tell what he 
might do! Not only go round blurting out a lot of idiotic 
drivel—maybe fall in a fit. That ’d look fine, wouldn’t 
it? Simply ruin all of us! I’d never dare show my face 
in this town again—and you wouldn’t, either.” 



244 


THE RED-BLOOD 


He still shook his head with morose impotence. 

“I tell you you must!” said Beatrice, imperiously. “It 
’ll be easy enough. Stick him upstairs out of the way, with 
somebody to watch him during the reception.” 

The proposal did sound feasible. “But who’d there 
be? I wouldn’t want none of the servants-” 

“Of course not! Well, there’s Mary.” 

“No, she’s got to stay downstairs t’ help your ma.” 

Bee was not to be denied. “Well, Arthur then. Nobody 
’ll miss him much, I guess. And he might much better 
be doing that than hanging around some saloon.” 

Thus the problem of what to do with John was solved, 
at least temporarily. By great good fortune, McNicol suc¬ 
ceeded in catching Arthur in the kitchen, bidding adieu 
to one of the servant girls—in the very act, indeed, of 
clearing out for the day. 


TV 

The ordeal of standing in the reception line for ninety 
minutes had proved unexpectedly wearing to him. Some 
two hundred and fifty people, most of them total strangers, 
had shaken hands with him. It was, in fact, a consid¬ 
erable surprise to him that he knew so few of the guests. 
There were a half dozen of his business associates: 
Artemas Bigelow, now the city’s most successful law¬ 
yer; Oscar McOscar, surprisingly distinguished look¬ 
ing at seventy-five; George Wickham, very gray, and 
somewhat out of countenance in the midst of such splen¬ 
dor; two or three others. A few of the family’s former 
neighbors on Second Avenue, invited over Beatrice’s vio¬ 
lent protests. Ellen Foss, of course. She it was who had 
gone over the list of prospective guests with Lessie. She 
it was who had undertaken to form the connecting link 
between the McNicols and this strange new world of 



THE MAUSOLEUM 


245 


fashion, to pilot the family through devious channels and 
unfamiliar shoals to a safe harborage of social prestige. 

Save for this handful, McNicol knew scarcely a soul; 
he felt like a stranger in his own house. He considered 
the whole formality a futile and silly affair. His right 
hand was lame, his back ached from all this bowing and 
scraping. 

Still, there were compensations. After all, the reception 
was nothing more or less than a tribute to his enormous 
success. It was pleasing, too, to note how everybody 
seemed staggered by the magnificence of the place. Yes, 
on the whole, he was glad to be here, to exhibit himself 
proudly in all this glory of proprietorship. 

The first intimation that the reception was not an undi¬ 
luted triumph came from Beatrice, who stood next to him 
in the line. 

“If mama doesn’t stop saying, Tt’s real nice of you to 
come’ to everybody,” she announced, irritably, “I think 
I shall scream!” 

McNicol glanced in surprise from her petulant features 
to the stout figure of his wife, near the other end of the 
line, and all at once had a fresh perspective on her. 

In truth, Lessie did appear to sad disadvantage. Her 
dress was expensive enough by all accounts, yet it con¬ 
veyed not the slightest hint of smartness. Her manner, 
even more, revealed how pitifully unaccustomed she was 
to playing the gracious hostess. “Just a real home body,” 
that was what she prided herself on being. 

Here she was, straining to catch the names of the latest 
arrivals, greeting each one with the same homely formula: 

“Real glad t’ meet you. Real nice of you t’ come.” 

Just then, moreover, he chanced to observe Ellen Foss 
circulating among the chattering groups of people. Lessie 
had wanted her in the receiving line, but she had chosen 


246 


THE RED-BLOOD 


to serve as a sort of floor marshal, while the family re¬ 
mained sequestered in the line. 

“By the Lord Harry!” McNicol wanted to exclaim. 
“There’s a woman for you!” 

And beyond dispute, Ellen contributed a fine presence 
—tall, somewhat spare, direct and candid of expression. 
Actually, she was far handsomer than she had been thirty 
years ago. A sublimated spinster—and all because of 
him! 

“What a wife she would have made some man!” 

McNicol sighed a little. His dissatisfaction deepened 
as he cast a brief glance at his other womenfolk. Jenny, 
standing next to Lessie; then Mary. Beatrice, thank 
Heaven, was different—a daughter any father would be 
proud of! There wasn’t a girl here this afternoon who 
could touch her. 

Her pert beauty, however, remained overcast, except 
while she talked to newcomers; and the look she now gave 
her father did not reciprocate his admiration. Her eye 
traveled disparagingly over his baggy business suit. 

“You ought to be wearing a frock coat, papa.” 

It occurred to him that he, too, might not fully measure 
up to polite standards. Nearly every other man in the 
room was wearing a Prince Albert. Still, he would not 
admit himself inferior. 

“It’s not like I couldn’t afford one,” he justified. Then, 
noting that her frown did not diminish: “What’s the mat¬ 
ter? Ain’t you havin’ a good time?” 

“There aren’t enough men.” Bee tossed her head. 
“Hardly any young men at all. A lot of old ladies—and 
at that, there’s scarcely anybody here who’s really smart, 
who really belongs!” 

McNicol was astounded. 

“Guess you’re wrong. Your ma invited the whole kit 
an’ caboodle.” 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


247 

“That’s just it! We invited them—and they’ve snubbed 
us. Of course, there are a few of the best people here, 
but the rest are just staying away.” 

“Are, ay?” His slightly pendulous cheeks grew hot. 
“Well, they’d best watch out what they do to me. Better 
not try an’ make joy of W. D. McNicol, they hadn’t. I 
could buy out the whole bunch.” 

The balance of the afternoon held still further disturb¬ 
ing incidents in store for him. 

A few minutes later, for example, after the receiving 
line had broken up, there came a sudden cessation of 
volubility and from the music room issued the preliminary 
notes of the piano. Mary’s young protege was about to 
earn his ten dollars. McNicol happened to be standing, 
unattached, near the door of a small reception parlor, 
and he seized the opportunity of sidling into this room for 
a moment’s breathing space. One of the gilt chairs invited 
him; here he could sit, just within the heavy portieres, 
and, quite unobserved, command the crowded hall outside. 

The singing of Signor Pasco evoked a prodigious enthu¬ 
siasm from the guests; there were several encores. Mc¬ 
Nicol was amazed. Possibly this sort of nonsense was 
popular with people of fashion. Perhaps, after all, he’d 
better pay off the young dago. 

As he prepared to rejoin his guests there came the 
sound of voices on the other side of the curtain. 

“How d’ you suppose they ever had enough sense to give 
us some music?” The accents were a woman’s. McNicol 
could just see one edge of her hat brim and the flare of 
her skirt. 

“Give up.” A man laughed. “What d’ you think of 
the outfit, anyhow?” 

“Well—just about what I expected. The usual vulgar- 
rich idea, don’t you think? Frankly, I came wholly out 
of curiosity.” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


248 

“Same here. And then Miss Foss fairly begged me to .’ 7 

The hat brim nodded. “What d’ you think of that 
daughter?” 

“The young one?” The man whistled softly. “I say 
—won’t she just raise the deuce before she’s through?” 

There was a pause before the unidentified lady went on: 
“Have you given adequate attention to yonder marble 
statue?” 

“Oh, I say!” Both laughed violently. “Look at the 
phiz on the damsel.” 

“And that dog! Did you ever!” 

More furtive tittering. 

“Well, I’m glad I came. I never expect to see a house 
that’s quite such a monstrosity as this one.” 

“Ha! I’ll tell you what it reminds me of. A grand 
mausoleum.” 

“Yes, that’s perfect! A mausoleum. And think of the 
money they must have squandered!” 

The man spoke more soberly. “I hear McNicol’s the 
richest man in town. . . . Well, let’s move on, eh?” 

The effect upon the mausoleum’s owner of all this 
scorching candor was a rather curious motley of emotions. 
Primarily, of course, he had been convulsed with rage, 
sorely tempted to leap out and confront these smirking 
traducers. That last respectful reference to his wealth, 
however, went a long way toward assuaging his spleen. 
They might malign his house, if they chose, and even his 
marvelous statue; but in the end they did obeisance to his 
money and his power. 

He debouched from the reception parlor, still somewhat 
staggered, and followed the guilty pair uncertainly. More 
than anything else, now, he felt wounded, misjudged; and 
there took substance within him a desire to vindicate 
himself to show these proud and jaunty strangers they 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


249 

were wrong. Yes, he wanted them to go away impressed, 
open mouthed. 

The Old Masters! “That’s the trick,” he nodded. 
Surely there could be no means of refuting their authen¬ 
ticity. 

He accosted the couple. Wouldn’t they like to see his 
collection of paintings? 

The false-hearted lady smiled charmingly. “So sorry 
—we’re just going.” 

A flicker of amusement pranced across her escort’s face. 
“But we really ought to see them, don’t you think?” 

“Just take a few minutes.” McNicol led the way 
toward the grand staircase. “I’ve put ’em up on the next 
floor.” 

Occupying the lower steps they encountered a second 
trio: Mary, Beatrice, and a dark young man whom Mc¬ 
Nicol identified as Signor Pasco. Their faces made an 
interesting study: Mary, restless, obviously vexed by her 
sister’s presence; Bee gloating over Mary’s annoyance 
and thoroughly enjoying the process of beguiling Signor 
Pasco; the vocalist, perplexed but polite, endeavoring to 
divide his dazzling smiles impartially. 

To McNicol, however, the encounter signified some¬ 
thing else: an opportunity to establish himself, in the 
presence of his two guests, as a generous patron of the 
arts. 

He pulled out his pocketbook. 

“Let’s see, now—how much was you to get for singing?” 

A brief silence. Signor Pasco’s face mantled. 

“Papa!” 

Mary’s voice was more controlled than Bee’s. “Couldn’t 
you let it go till later?” 

“Oh, no, I just as soon pay him now,” said McNicol, 
handsomely. “Like as not he can use the cash. Ten 
dollars, wasn’t it?” 


250 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Not a little proud of this demonstration of liberality, 
he convoyed his two guests to the spacious hallway of 
the second floor. 

“Here they are!” he gesticulated, proudly. 

The lady stepped back with a little gasp. “Not a Rem¬ 
brandt!” 

“Yes sir-ee! That’s just what it is. An Old Master. 
Cost me twenty-five thousand, it did, an’ I could sell it 
to-morrow for thirty.” 

“Really!” 

McNicol, in his element, pointed to the next painting. 
“Yes, sir—and here’s a Rubens by the same artist.” 

His ears must have deceived him—he fancied he had 
detected a snickering sound; but when he turned quickly 
their countenances were entirely solemn. 

Wouldn’t they like to see the rest of the upstairs? 

“Perhaps just one room,” said the lady, “and then 
we really must hurry away.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” McNicol considered the situation. They 
were standing closest to the suite occupied by his wife 
and himself, and his first impulse was to exhibit these 
rooms; but he reflected that Lessie, like as not, had al¬ 
ready fled thither, and they would stumble on to her, 
placidly rocking back and forth, her hands folded over 
her stomach, the faithful Babe at her feet. 

“That wouldn’t look so pretty,” he told himself. 

Then he remembered the guest-room at the other end 
of the hallway. What the family jocularly called the 
bridal suite. Here was luxury to make even the “best 
people,” the “old families,” turn green with envy! Here 
was finery to induce even these two elegant slanderers to 
eat their words. 

Would they please step this way? 

He turned the knob, but the door refused to open. Then 


THE MAUSOLEUM 


251 

he saw a key in the lock. Funny thing, that—probably 
some of Lessie’s apprehensive work. 

He turned the key briskly, swung back the portal. 

“This,” he announced, grandiosely—“this is the bridal 
suite!” And he watched their faces avidly for the first 
dawning of stupendous wonderment. 

Stupendous wonderment, yes—but with it an ingredient 
of distaste. There issued a queer blubbering noise, too. 
McNicol wheeled about and beheld his son John sitting 
on the side of the magnificent bed. He was only half 
dressed. Arthur, in deserting his post, had evidently de¬ 
vised the ingenious expedient of depriving the defective 
boy of most of his clothing, and taken the further precau¬ 
tion of locking the door. 

Howbeit, McNicoks elder son apparently resented his 
banishment from the afternoon’s festivities most griev¬ 
ously. The lopsided face he turned toward his father 
and the two stylish guests was distorted with extreme 
unhappiness and the marks of many tears. 


CHAPTER II 


ENNUI 


I 


RTHUR meeched into his father’s office with obvious 



^ reluctance, the usual expression of slouching defiance 
in his posture and on his snub-nosed, freckled face. 

McNicol surveyed him unamiably from his large ma¬ 
hogany desk. 

“Well, what is it this time?” 

Arthur remained inarticulate a moment, then his sense 
of injustice gushed impetuously into words: “I’ve got to 
have more money, that’s all.” 

“More money!” McNicol’s resentment was instant. 
“Well, I guess not! I’m not givin’ you another cent to 
throw away in your dirty poolrooms—make up your mind 
to that.” 

His son’s countenance grew more sullen. “I don’t 
throw away money in poolrooms. I make money there. 
If I didn’t, I couldn’t live!” 

“A cheap gambler, ay? I thought so. Well, you better 
go on makin’ a livin’ that way; that’s ’bout all you’re 
good for!” 

Arthur stuck to the issue. “You don’t pay me a tenth 
part of what you give Bee. Six dollars a week—why, a 
man can’t even dress on that much! Other fellows have 
spending money, and-” 

“When I was your age I got along on a dollar a week. 
I feed you, too, don’t I? Give you a mighty soft bed 



ENNUI 


2 53 


to sleep in—an’ don’t charge you a cent, neither. Six 
dollars a week’s clear velvet to you—and a whole lot 
more ’n you’re worth to the business.” 

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Not my fault, is it, 
you keep me stuck down in the packing department? Why 
don’t you give me a chance?” 

“A chance!” ridiculed his father. “Fine use you’ve 
made of the chances I’ve given you already.” 

“I’ve got to have more money,” Arthur persisted. 

“That’s all from you!” McNicol pointed to the door. 
“Clear out, now! ” 

Rank ingratitude! What was this younger generation 
coming to? If ever there was a boy who ought to revere 
his father, that boy was Arthur. Instead, he was sulky, 
disobedient—a “wild one,” evincing no sense of his respon¬ 
sibilities, apparently preferring the lowest companionship. 

“I’ll keep that young rascal on a short tether,” McNicol 
resolved, grimly. Such was clearly his bounden duty, as 
a parent; if he didn’t, there was no telling just what bad 
end the boy might come to. “I’ll learn him!” 

In his present slough of virulence, he could find no 
solace in the splendor that surrounded him. His spacious 
office, in one corner of the plant’s new marble administra¬ 
tion building, usually had power to enthrall him with its 
reminders of astounding achievement. He stood up now, 
and crossed the rich maroon carpet toward a pho¬ 
tograph on the wall. The picture of that humble frame 
barn, behind his first home on High Street, where for 
eight bleak years he had struggled for his foothold. And 
to-day—all this spacious magnificence. On either side 
of the ancient photograph hung other more recent pic¬ 
tures: of the present plant; of the branch houses in other 
American cities; of the firm’s office in London, in Paris— 
where Charley Foss now contrived to endure life’s tedium; 
in a dozen other foreign capitals. 


THE RED-BLOOD 


254 

He walked to the window whence he could envisage 
the length and breadth of his business domains—from the 
first brick structure, which had been christened so aus¬ 
piciously by that memorable banquet to the city’s physi¬ 
cians and druggists, and which now shrank into compara¬ 
tive insignificance—to the latest huge unit in course of 
erection on the other side of Cooper Street. From a colos¬ 
sal brick smokestack issued billows of dense black smoke 
to be swept horizontally across the railroad tracks toward 
the river by the inexorable March north wind. In the 
air that pervasive pungent smell of countless drugs he 
loved so well. Everywhere, busy animation, sheer big¬ 
ness, vast sweep and scope. 

McNicol ought to have been satisfied. Perversely 
enough, all this stupendous panorama—his own autograph 
on brick and stone—soured him with its very majesty and 
might. For he could think only of those baffling children 
of his: John, with his incurable blemish; Mary with her 
foolish fads; Arthur, the sulky ingrate. And Beatrice, 
the only one of the four who knew how to handle him, was 
a thousand miles away at her finishing school. 

He sighed. 

“What a fool I been to slave and sweat all these years 
for the likes of them! ” For the moment he was convinced 
that his sole motivation had been to heap up a handsome 
inheritance for his children. 

The monthly directors’ meeting was to be held at eleven 
o’clock. McNicol drew out his watch half hopefully, and 
was disappointed that it was only ten-thirty. Time seemed 
to hang a bit heavy on his hands these days. He experi¬ 
enced a very definite relief, in truth, when his secretary 
brought word that a caller awaited his pleasure. 

The visitor, a dapper young fellow, announced that he 
was getting up an elegant book, to be entitled, “Leading 
Men of Detroit,” and to be sumptuously bound in morocco 


ENNUI 


255 


leather. He had already interviewed the mayor and the 
local United States Senator, and thence, impliedly, he 
had hurried to McNicoPs office. All he wanted was a 
photograph and a biographical synopsis. It was a matter 
of complete indifference whether McNicol subscribed for 
the book or not. That wasn’t the point. The organizer 
of this splendid project was anxious to have only the truly 
representative citizens in his volume. And he was going 
to be mighty particular about whom he let in; obscure 
persons would be refused admission peremptorily. 

“All right.” McNicoPs thorax seemed to expand invol¬ 
untarily. 

The young man—really a pretty discriminating chap, 
it seemed—forthwith assumed the role of a deferential 
Boswell, concerned solely in preserving to posterity the 
inspiring record of an unexampled career. First he ob¬ 
tained an autograph, then set down the place and date 
of birth, the names of his subject’s parents. 

“Now then—any special facts or circumstances regard¬ 
ing your birth or ancestry?” 

McNicol coughed uncomfortably. “No, they ain’t.” 

The biographer went on to other details; then: 

“Clubs?” 

Again the great man was conscious of certain defects 
in his prestige. “No, sir; don’t think much of them. , . . 
But my wife she belongs to the Oratorio Society. Sings 
alto.” 

“Yes? Now—what public offices have you held?” 

McNicol was growing uncomfortable. “I got no use 
for dirty politics. Though I guess, if I wanted to-” 

“Of course,” the young fellow coincided easily. “Not 
a bit of doubt of it. The city would be proud to give you 
any office you wanted.” 

He veered tactfully to the topic of the pharmaceutical 
business, and McNicol for the next ten minutes enjoyed 



THE RED-BLOOD 


256 

the subtle ecstasy of dilating upon his prowess to a thor¬ 
oughly appreciative auditor. He was quite deprecating 
about it, too—as if what he had accomplished didn’t 
amount to so very much, after all. But the interviewer 
refused to be fooled. 

“Here—have a cigar!” proffered the distinguished citi¬ 
zen to the discriminating young chap. 

“Thank you. And now, in case you should happen to 
want a copy of the book, I’ll leave one of these order 
blanks with you.” 

This seemed fair enough. “How much you charg¬ 
ing? . . . Twenty-five dollars!” 

The solicitor seemed not at all abashed. “No binding 
could be too good for such a volume.” 

“All right—I’ll take one.” 

“Understand—there’s not the slightest obligation. But 
I think you’ll be proud to own a copy. That’s the way 
Mayor Pingree felt.” The young man exhibited a signed 
subscription blank. “You see, he ordered two.” 

“Well, then, give me two.” McNicol was not to be out¬ 
done by any one. The extra copy he could send to his 
mother for exhibition around Cartwright. 

“Thanks!” The caller seemed greatly impressed by 
such patronage. “I’ll see you’re given a conspicuous 
place in the book. Mail me your photograph next week, 
please.” He glanced rapidly over his notes. “Guess I 
have everything. No. I forgot to ask you whether or 
not you have any children.” 

This was a grievous anticlimax, certainly; and, as if 
it did not suffice in itself, his first-born offspring herself 
appeared in his office just then. 

“Well, what is it?” he demanded, inimically, as soon as 
the bright young solicitor had departed. “You’ll have t’ 
be quick. Directors’ meeting in three minutes.” 


ENNUI 


257 


Mary’s frequent air of conscientious martyrdom 
seemed painfully intensified. 

‘Tm sorry to disturb you, father; but there are a 
couple of things I feel I must speak to you about.” 

Instinctively he braced himself for opposition. 

“Well?” 

“Things I’ve just heard about, and that you ought to 
know. For example, somebody told me the other day 
that the girls in the capsule department were paid only 
three or four dollars a week. If that’s true it’s simply 
outrageous!” 

Her father could scarcely credit his sense of hearing. 
Mary had for several years been a source of exaspera¬ 
tion to him, with her finicky ideas about marriage, her 
succession of freakish caprices; but always heretofore she 
had remained entirely on the defensive. Now she dared 
to invade his business domains, made bold to tamper with 
affairs that did not concern her in the least. 

“How can anybody expect girls to stay decent on three 
dollars a week?” she demanded. 

The utter injustice of her accusation! For McNicol 
deemed himself an exceptionally liberal employer. To his 
credit be it said he had never forgotten the hard lessons 
he had learned from old Cyrus Rorick; a large part of 
his success, indeed, was traceable to his fixed policy of 
paying high prices for brains. True, this principle applied 
only to administration officers and scientific investigators 
—not to his unskilled laborers or these numskull girls 
his daughter was ranting about. For all forms of medioc¬ 
rity, in fact, he still retained his earlier contempt. 

Perhaps the circumstance that she had not yet been 
struck dead for her temerity encouraged Mary. There 
was genuine indignation in her voice now—a crusader 
zeal in her demeanor. 


THE RED-BLOOD 


258 

“I’ve been told also that live animals are being experi¬ 
mented on—frightfully tortured.” 

Another incredible gratuitous assault upon his beloved 
business. The firm’s new biological laboratory—that 
must be what she meant. 

McNicol managed to stand up. “You mind your own 
business, you—” The epithet that came to his lips was 
one not ordinarily applied by fathers to daughters; he 
contrived to check it at the very threshold. 

“If these things are true,” said Mary, firmly, “I shall 
leave your house.” 

The office door had been left slightly open; and upon 
this impasse of clashing wills Ellen Foss now cheerfully 
obtruded. 

“Am I late for the meeting?” 

She pretended not to observe their set faces, but Mc¬ 
Nicol was somewhat puzzled and nettled by the way she 
went straight to Mary and put her arm about the 
younger woman’s thin shoulder—protectively, it ap¬ 
peared. 


11 

The directors’ meeting proceeded uneventfully along 
familiar channels until close to adjournment time. Then 
McNicol precipitated a very lively little rumpus by 
broaching a project he had been nursing in his mind 
for several weeks. 

“The time has come,” he announced portentously, “to 
branch out into new fields.” 

The other directors looked politely skeptical. 

“Such as what?” inquired one. 

“Well, why not a few specialties? Take a good baby 
food, for instance. Add fifty thousand a year to our 
profits. Or mebbe a good stiff tonic.” 

In brief—patent medicines! They seemed aghast at 


ENNUI 


259 

the heresy. What! McNicol & Company start dabbling 
in proprietary remedies, after all these years of strictest 
ethical standards! Why, the medical profession would 
be instantly antagonized. One and all, the other direc¬ 
tors vetoed the idea. 

This dastardly doing-to-death of his brilliant plan had 
the effect of heightening the disillusion that had been 
growing in McNicol since the mortifying episodes of the 
New Year’s reception two months ago. Now he was the 
victim of elusive misgivings about his gorgeous new home, 
his cherished marble statue, even his Old Masters. In the 
business, too, he was beginning to feel himself frustrated. 
His partial retirement had not worked out well; he was 
finding his new leisure incredibly irksome. 

What he was groping for was some new groove of 
self-expression, some new outlet for his energy. Hence 
his proposal to manufacture baby foods and tonics. Yet 
here were these directors brushing aside his suggestions 
contemptuously, trying to tell him what he could or 
couldn’t do with his own business, intimating, indeed, that 
things ran more smoothly without him. In short, that 
he was an obsolescence. 

Artemas Bigelow, quite as if the matter were com¬ 
pletely disposed of, introduced another topic: 

“About that Cooper Street mixup. As you all know, 
I’ve been endeavoring to persuade the Common Council 
to close the street, so’s we could connect up the new addi¬ 
tion with the rest of the plant.” His heavy brows con¬ 
verged. “Well, I’ve struck a snag. A couple of the 
aldermen are acting sort of queer—like they wanted 
sweetening.” 

McNicol temporarily forgot his personal grievance. 
“You mean—bribes?” 

Bigelow’s enormous bald head, so impressive to courts 
and juries, nodded slightly. “Call it anything you like.” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


260 

“Well,” struck in another director, “it’s certainly worth 
something to us to get all that extra land, to say nothing 
of the added convenience.” 

But McNicol arose in a great passion and struck the 
table with his clenched fist. 

“Not a nickel, understand! The dirty sneaks—I’ll 
teach ’em to try and stand in my way. We’ll just see 
who’s runnin’ this town—honest men or thieves!” 

A complete silence. None of the directors dared stand 
up against such incandescent wrath. 

The meeting adjourned. McNicol felt a little better. 

hi 

Other irritations, however, followed one another 
throughout the day; and that evening, toward the end of 
supper, just as he was looking forward with some relish 
to the usual rich pastry, Selma, the comely young dining¬ 
room maid, emerged from the pantry pale-faced, and made 
it known that the apple pies had mysteriously disap¬ 
peared. 

“Who stole ’em?” stormed McNicol. 

Lessie’s housewifelv instinct was to defend the serv- 

j 

ants. “What makes you think anybody stole ’em?” 

“Pies don’t walk off by themselves, do they?” 

She shook her head. “But I’m sure all our girls are 
honest, pa.” 

“The whole trouble with you is, you spoil ’em,” Mc¬ 
Nicol reopened the topic a little later, in the library. 

Lessie looked up from the Methodist weekly paper. 
“What’s that, pa?” 

“I say, you’re spoilin’ them girls,” he shouted. “Lettin’ 
’em run over you.” 

“They didn’t steal those pies.” 

“Mebbe so, mebbe not. Some one stole ’em, didn’t 


ENNUI 


261 


they? I'm tellin’ you they take advantage of you, ma. 
For example, about their pay.” 

Lessie shook her head. “I spoke to ’em about that; 
but they don’t understand such things.” 

The method of paying the servants’ wages had caused 
him no small inconvenience lately. Selma received her 
pay on the 1st of each month; the cook, by some prescrip¬ 
tive custom, on the 10th; another maid on the 15th, and 
so forth. Five times during the month McNicol must re¬ 
member to bring home enough ready money to pay some 
servant—obviously an unbearable nuisance. 

“ ‘Don’t understand!’” he parodied. “Simplest thing 
in the world. Tell you what, Lessie. This is the first of 
March and I’ve brought home enough cash to settle with 
each one up to to-day—and after this, you pay ’em all 
on the first of the month.” When she continued to shake 
her head dubiously, he added: “Well, then, I’ll explain 
it to ’em myself. I’ll settle with ’em this time, and, once 
they’ve got used to it, you can start in again.” 

She remained doggedly impervious. “I’m tellin’ you, 
pa, they won’t understand.” 

McNicol grunted irascibly and detoured toward the 
rear of the house. Lessie was grossly incompetent as a 
household manager. All women were, for that matter— 
except that paragon, Ellen Foss. They had absolutely 
no conception of efficiency. All that was needed in the 
present situation was a bit of firmness and the applica¬ 
tion of business methods. He’d show his wife how things 
ought to be run! 

The kitchen was quite deserted; but from the basement 
he detected the sounds of singing. The servants’ Satur¬ 
day evening song service. He hastened down the back 
stairs and came to the door of the cook’s room, opened it 
an inch, and looked in. 

There was no piano or organ to guide the worshipers, 



262 


THE RED-BLOOD 


and they flatted so woefully that each verse of their 
hymns was wont to end at least two full tones lower 
than it had begun. The effect was of a phonograph 
slowly running down. The singing was unspeakably 
dreary and dispirited; the fatigued women swooped in¬ 
cessantly from one note to the next. 

McNicol could not have discerned such flaws even if 
he had been listening intently. His first reaction had 
been a fretful speculation as to how long he would have 
to wait. Now, however, he was surprised to observe 
Arthur in the room. His son sat a little behind the others, 
and he was not singing. His attention seemed definitely 
caught, nevertheless; his father, still marveling at this 
unprecedented interest in religious worship, traced his 
look to the buxom waitress, Selma. 

Whatever Arthur’s motives, there could be no deny¬ 
ing the girl’s fervor as a vocalist. Her voice dominated 
all the others; she was the precentor of this dismal choir. 
Just now her accents rose shrilly with the final lines of 
the gospel hymn, as if perhaps she hoped even her deaf 
mistress on the floor above might overhear and reward 
such praiseworthy zeal. 

“Wash me in the blood of the La-a-mb, 

And I shall be whiter than snow.” 

McNicol decided he would wait no longer to demon¬ 
strate his notion of business methods in the home. 

“Just like I told you,” he repeated to Lessie in their 
bedroom, a half hour later. “All I had to do was explain 
the idea and give ’em the money. They wa’n’t a word 
said.” 

“Mebbe not, but—” She seemed imbued with the 
gloomiest possible forebodings. 

A sudden recollection presently distracted McNicol. 

“Better get rid of that Selma, ma.” He narrated the 


ENNUI 


263 

phenomenon of Arthur’s presence at the song service. 
“He sneaked out mighty fast when I came in the room.” 

“But Selma!” Lessie appeared incredulous. “She’s 
a real Christian, that girl. More religious than any of 
the rest. And Arthur, too—he’s a real good boy at heart. 
They’s no harm in his goin’ there to sing, if he feels 
like it, is they?” 

“You can’t trust none of the baggages,” McNicol as¬ 
serted. “Mind you, I’m not sayin’ they’s aught wrong 
so far, but Em takin’ no chances.” He checked his im¬ 
pulse to tell her just what he thought of Arthur’s worth¬ 
lessness, for Lessie could see no fault at all in the young 
rascal. “And by the way, ma— Mary didn’t say nothin’ 
to you about leavin’?” 

She surveyed him anxiously. “Leavin’!” 

“Um-m.” At that, he must explain his daughter’s un¬ 
conscionable intrusion into his business affairs. “She got 
huffy—said something ’bout leavin’. But I reckon she’ll 
think twice before she quits a fine home like this.” 

Lessie sighed unhappily. “Sometimes I can’t make out 
what’s got into Mary—an’ with Johnny as bad off as he 
is. . . . My gracious, Babe, what’s ailin’ you?” 

The pug dog, ordinarily fast asleep by this hour, had 
been moving restlessly about the room. Now he whined 
uneasily. 

“Lie down!” McNicol commanded. 

“I tell you they’s something wrong with him. You 
don’t suppose they’s any burglars in the house!” 

“Burglars!” Her lord roared with laughter. 

“In a great big house like this, y’ can’t tell what might 
be goin’ on. Like as not, I forgot—” She tried the door. 
“No, it’s locked all right,” she discovered with infinite 
relief. 

“Don’t see what you got to be scared ’bout,” jested 
McNicol, “with a splendid watch-dog like Babe in the 


264 


THE RED-BLOOD 


room.” A sudden recollection caught him. “Oh, say, 
ma—who’s livin’ up in the tower room?” 

“They’s nobody, so far’s I know. Why?” 

That afternoon, when approaching the Mausoleum, he 
had chanced to look up at the Gothic tower, and per¬ 
ceived what seemed to be a sudden movement of the 
lace curtains. 

Probably his imagination. At any rate, there would 
be no point to telling Lessie—getting her all worked up 
again. 

“Why?” she persisted. 

He shook his head. “Nothin’.” 


IV 

Lessie’s sharp exclamation awakened him early the 
next morning. 

“Welly!” 

He stirred irately, not opening his eyes. 

“Welly—the door’s unlocked!” 

“You probably forgot-” 

“No, I didn’t, either. Remember—I tried it the las’ 
thing I did.” 

He approached the door grudgingly. 

“You make me tired,” he said, crossly. “The key’s 
here, ain’t it? You know ’s well ’s I do nobody could 
put another key-” 

Lessie exclaimed again as the truth dawned upon her: 
“The door’s been unlocked from the inside. Oh, Welly, 
they musta been somebody in the room last night while 
we was talkin’ together. Under the bed!” She knelt 
down fearfully to make an examination. 

“Nonsense, I tell y’!” 

But she screamed, “It’s Babe!” 

Half convinced by now that something was amiss, Me- 




ENNUI 265 

Nicol bent down and perceived the inert figure of the 
pug dog. 

“Here you—clear out!” he called. 

Babe, however, deigned not to respond, and his master 
haled him forth roughly. Then it became evident that 
his inattention was entirely forgivable—that, in fact, his 
upturned limbs presented an authentic specimen of rigor 
mortis. 

“He’s been poisoned! ” cried Lessie from a rain of tears. 

McNicol, shocked into clear-headedness, glanced rap¬ 
idly about the bedroom. Everything seemed as usual 
until he noted with a start that the top of the bureau 
looked unfamiliarly bare. The photograph of his mother 
had disappeared—yes, and most of the other pictures. 
Even the lace doily was gone. Then he observed the 
missing photographs jumbled together in a waste-basket; 
but their silver frames had vanished utterly. 

“By God! They has been somebody in here.” 

Mechanically he pulled open the upper drawer and 
surveyed its ransacked interior. In one corner lay 
Lessie’s worn jewel case, its cover half torn off; her few 
poor rings and necklaces flung out—contemptuously, as 
it were. 

“Mighty slim pickin’s around this place,” McNicol re¬ 
flected, fleetingly, and felt his policy of close-fistedness 
thoroughly vindicated. 

But another, more disturbing thought suddenly visited 
him. 

“They musta been lyin’ under the bed all the time we 
was talkin’ together las’ night.” What had he said? . . . 
The discussion about the servants’ wages; about that 
baggage, Selma; about Mary. Then, finally, he and 
Lessie had talked about burglars—and how the marauder 
must have chuckled when he listened to that part of the 
conversation! 


266 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol turned toward his clothing, only to discover 
that his trousers, containing his wallet, his small change, 
and his keys, had likewise been stolen. He did not even 
pause to search for his second-best pair, but hastened 
sans-culotte out into the corridor, past the moaning 
Lessie, still huddled over Babe’s pitiful clay. 

The spacious gilt frames that had circumscribed his 
two Old Masters now stared at him blankly, emptily. 
The canvasses, he found, had been neatly, sharply dis¬ 
severed around the edges. Connoisseurs, these bold rob¬ 
bers: they had not molested the English hunting scenes or 
the marble statue in the hall below. Everywhere he came 
upon evidences of hasty vandalism: rugs thrown in heaps, 
tapestries torn from the walls, books dumped out on the 
floor—yet offhand he could detect few outright thefts. 
When he reached the dining room, however, he discov¬ 
ered the sideboard drawers overturned upon the carpet. 
All the new household silverware, provided by the New 
York art dealer at the cost of an odd thousand dollars, 
was missing. 

As McNicol contemplated this scene of disorder, scowl¬ 
ing darkly, he suddenly remembered the agitated curtains 
of the tower room. 

“By the Lord Harry! I wonder-” 

But as he hurried to the staircase again he heard a 
feminine shriek from the upper regions of the house; and 
when he reached the servants’ hallway on the third floor 
he discerned the comely waitress, Selma, kneeling with 
horror-stricken eyes at the side of Arthur’s unconscious 
form. 

“What’s this? What’s this?” 

“I don’t know, sir,” protested the girl. “I jus’ come 
out of my room and found him lyin’ like this.” 

McNicol noted that his son, like himself, was clad 
only in a nightgown. 



ENNUI 


267 


“But what’s he doin’ up on this floor?” 

“How should I know, sir?” There was a filament of 
hard defiance in Selma’s voice. “I was jus’ startin’ down 
to the kitchen,” she added, with a gesture that drew 
attention to the circumstance that she, alone of the three, 
was fully dressed for the day. 

Arthur interrupted at this instant with a groan. 

“Fetch some water, can’t you?” McNicol demanded, 
testily. 

There was a livid contusion under one of his son’s 
eyes, he discerned, and a scalp wound behind his ear. 
One or two other servants came running to the scene, 
then Mary, and finally Lessie. Arthur soon revived suf¬ 
ficiently to tell his story. As to how he happened to be 
on the third floor he remained hazy. It was there, at 
any rate, he had suddenly encountered three men. There 
was just enough light for him to be able to see them; it 
was probably early dawn. The trio held him up with 
revolvers, he said, and ordered him into one of the rooms; 
but with imprudent courage he had suddenly hurled him¬ 
self upon them, knocked one of them down and was en¬ 
gaging with a second when the third must have struck 
him with a revolver butt from behind. 

“Arthur! Arthur!” Lessie cried, temporarily forget¬ 
ful even of Babe’s sad demise. “They might have killed 
you.” 

The hero’s freckled face was full of contentment. “I 
got one of ’em, anyhow.” Then he remembered, “They 
were carrying bags, all of them—full of swag, I s’pose.” 

McNicol repressed the very definite glow of pride he 
felt in his scapegrace son’s intrepidity. 

“Where were they coinin’ from when you first see 
’em?” he queried. 

Arthur’s brows drew down with an effort of recollec¬ 
tion. “Why, I guess—yes, they seemed to come from 


268 THE RED-BLOOD 

that staircase. You know—the one that goes up to the 
tower.” 

Attended by a timorous train of domestics, McXicol 
marched up the staircase and threw open the door of 
the tower room, prepared to confront the three vandals 
who had despoiled the Mausoleum. 

There was no one in the small chamber. On the 
floor, however, appeared an old ragged shirt, an incredible 
accumulation of cigarette and cigar stubs, and the re¬ 
mains of many a festive meal. McXicol identified the 
half-eaten apple pies that were to have graced last 
night's supper table. 

But the cook seemed chiefly interested in the desiccated 
vestiges of a once-ample ham. “They stole that there 
a whole month ago,” she volunteered. “Musta been liv¬ 
ing up here ever since.” 

Two hours later, after the police had completed a bar¬ 
ren search of the house, Lessie found her lord in the 
farthest and most obscure recess of the library, chewing 
his cigar disconsolately. 

“Well, pa,” she began, pitilessly, “I always said the 
house was too big. I always said we was regularly in¬ 
vitin’ burglars to rob us.” 

McXicol was in one of his rare moods of inadequacy. 
Presently he would rally to his accustomed blustering 
pugnacity, but for the moment he felt overwhelmed by 
the sequence of adversities. 

“We'll get it all back in twenty-four hours—have the 
scoundrels behind the bars,” he professed. But there 
was no conviction in his words. 

His wife shook her head dolefully. “You knew about 
Mary’s leavin’?” 

“Leavin’!” 

“L T m-hm. Says she’s goin’ to visit a friend of hers 
for a week or so, but I don’t know. I’m ’fraid-” 



ENNUI 


269 

He contrived to shed that blow. “Don’t you worry, 
ma. Mary’ll learn her lesson soon enough—come kitin’ 
back home mighty fast.” 

Lessie’s glazed eyes reflected a morose dissent. “And 
the servants—they’re all leavin’ this mornin’, too. Seems 
like, when you paid ’em off las’ night, they figured you was 
dischargin’ ’em.” 

“Dischargin’ ’em!” Some remainder of exasperation 
flickered up. “The fools! I never said a word-” 

His wife again shook her head. “I told you they 
couldn’t understand such things. They got to be 
handled! You got to treat ’em the ways they’re used to.” 
She paused. “Well, shall I tell ’em it was all a mistake— 
and they’ll get their pay at the same times as always?” 

McNico! had never sensed such paralyzing impotence. 

“Go ahead,” he acquiesced, almost meekly; and inad¬ 
vertently tweaked his heavy eyebrows with a gesture of 
fatigue. 



CHAPTER III 


FRUSTRATION 

I 

M ATTERS did not much improve for McNicol dur¬ 
ing the succeeding weeks of spring. 

Mary was still visiting her mythical friend, contrary 
to his most confident predictions. She had returned to 
the house several times to see her mother, but always 
while he was away. Ellen Foss, he suspected, was also 
in touch with his errant daughter. He himself had not 
laid eyes on her since the Sunday morning of the burglary, 
and steadfastly maintained that he had no desire to do so. 
She would simply have to learn her lesson, eat humble 
pie; when she was ready to admit her mistake, he would 
forgive her. Vague, alarming intimations reached him, 
however, that Mary was engaging in what she called 
“social work”—that is, putting false ideas into the heads 
of wretches who were too lazy to earn an honest living. 
Yes, even consorting with the unspeakable women who 
were brought into police court each morning, intervening 
with the judge in their behalf. Dragging the name of 
McNicol through the city’s foulest mire! How people 
would smirk w T hen the fact became common property. 

And his Old Masters, his refulgent silverware—not a 
single trace of them had been discovered, nor of the 
scoundrels who had perpetrated the outrage. The police 
force seemed in a stupid trance; day after day passed, 
and nothing was being done, apparently. 

270 


FRUSTRATION 


271 


“They’ll let the finest residence in town be robbed,” 
McNicol snorted, “and then never turn a hand t’ catch 
the thieves. It’s an outrage—it ’ll give the city a black 
eye all over the country.” 

Noboby paid much attention to his complaints—that 
was what aroused his hottest indignation. The loss itself 
was bad enough, but he could have borne that. 

Another grievance, which he and Artemas Bigelow hap¬ 
pened to be discussing in the pharmaceutical office one 
Saturday afternoon, had to do with the closing of Cooper 
Street by the Common Council. 

“I’ll admit I’m stuck,” said the attorney, pulling his 
long adimc nose. “Nobody’s ever going to use the street, 
and there’s no possible objection to closing it and letting 
you build your new addition right across. I’ve convinced 
a lot of the aldermen; but all the reformers are against 
it—claim its converting public property for private use, 
threaten to raise hell in the papers about giving away the 
people’s land to wealthy corporations, and all that sort of 
rot. The answer is, the Council’s about evenly divided 
and the balance of power’s in the hands of three lousy 
crooks who’ll either sell you their votes or knife you in 
the back.” 

“Never!” asseverated McNicol. “They ain’t a-goin’ 
to hold me up.” 

Bigelow surveyed his client thoughtfully. “Well, that’s 
all right with me. But remember this: Cooper Street’s 
worth fifteen or twenty thousand dollars to you, and it 
won’t cost more ’n a thousand, at the outside, to swing 
those three votes.” 

“And I’m tellin’ you it don’t make no difference how 
much it costs. It’s bribery, jus’ the same, ain’t it? What’s 
this city cornin’ to if honest business men are t’ be gov¬ 
erned by dirty thieves?” 

“Oh, it’s a rotten state of affairs, I’ll grant you; but 


272 


THE RED-BLOOD 


you know what municipal politics are.” The lawyer con¬ 
sidered the situation anew. “No use going to the mayor; 
he’d probably be against us. I’ve already talked with 
Joe Cottrell, the boss who controls these boodle aider- 
men; but he won’t interfere. Maybe, if you saw 
him-” 

“If I saw Cottrell I’d tell him a thing or two!” 

Bigelow grinned. “Don’t do that, or he’ll raise your 
tax assessment. But seriously, why don’t you go with 
me to Joe’s place and have a chat with him? He knows 
who you are—probably be impressed by what you said.” 

The telephone rang. 

“Hello!” answered McNicol. “That you, Lessie? . . . 
Arthur? . . . Yes, I’ll remember.” 

He pivoted around once more. “Me see Cottrell?” 
The idea impressed him favorably. “All right—but not 
one cent for corruption.” 

“When could you go? To-night—say nine or ten 
o’clock? That’s the best time to catch him.” 

McNicol jerked his head toward the telephone. “That 
there was Lessie remindin’ me this was my son, Arthur’s, 
birthday. I got to be home for supper—but I guess I 
could manage to get away later on.” 

“Be at my office at nine-thirty,” instructed Bigelow, 
“and I’ll give you your first lesson in practical govern¬ 
ment. You’ll probably end up by going into politics 
yourself.” 

“Me go into politics!” 

“Sure. Why not? Once a man gets a taste of the 
game, he usually wants to play it all the time.” 

“Politics!” exploded McNicol. “None-a that dirty 
mess for me—thank you!” 

But the suggestion somehow persisted in his mind for 
several moments after Arte mas Bigelow had departed. 

Just as he himself was leaving he bethought himself 



FRUSTRATION 


2 73 

of Arthur’s birthday. Lessie had asked him to bring 
home some present for his son. He debated the matter 
ponderously. Arthur, on the whole, had conducted him¬ 
self admirably since the episode of the burglary; and, 
now that his father had taken the precaution to arrange 
for the departure of the comely waitress, Selma, no 
further trouble on that score need be anticipated. 

But what kind of a present? Completely at a loss, 
McNicol had recourse to one of his letter files, labeled 
“Family,” and turned to a tab inscribed with his son’s 
name. He had some hazy recollection of a list Arthur 
had given him, several years back, of certain Christmas 
gifts he yearned for at the time. 

Yes, here it was, in a begrimed juvenile scrawl: 

My dear Father, 

These are the things I would like for Xmas. 

1 Premier bicycle with copper rims. 

1 air rifle. 

A regular allowance of $.50 per wk. 

1 gray check suit with long trousers, like Harry Wickham’s. 

1 camera with automatic shutter. 

1 developing outfit and tripod. 

(But if you don’t get the camera don't buy the develop¬ 
ing outfit either, because it is no use without the 
camera.) 

If you will give me these presents, I will try hard to do the 
things you expect of me, and to give better satisfaction in every 
way. 

Yrs obdtly, 

Arthur McNicol. 

“Cheeky young scamp!” 

But there was an unmistakable ingredient of affection 
in McNicol’s voice. He was not a little proud, too, of 
the bravery Arthur had displayed in grappling with three 
armed burglars. There was real stuff in the boy, after 


THE RED-BLOOD 


274 

all; he would surprise him to-night with a generous gift. 

But which one? He scanned the list again. Arthur 
had certainly outgrown most of these callow desires. A 
bicycle? No, bicycles were expensive luxuries, and his 
son might not want one by now. An allowance? Yes, 
Arthur would like that; only last month he had asked 
for one. Perhaps as much as a dollar a week! 

Still, allowances were apt to be fruitful sources of dis¬ 
sipation. No telling what Arthur might do with all that 
extra spending money in his pockets. Better something 
wholesome, something useful. 

McNicol, with a sense of abundant generosity, decided 
in favor of the suit of clothes. He would announce the 
gift as a sort of grand climax to the birthday supper. 

11 

Lessie he encountered in the main hall, raptly admiring 
the marble statue. 

“Huh! See they finally got it changed,” he noted. 

The transformation, indeed, was well-nigh staggering. 
Gone the aristocratic hound that once had frolicked so 
gravely at its mistress’s side. Instead, the figure of a 
pug dog—the ill-fated Babe immortalized in deathless 
stone! A somewhat etherealized conception, perhaps: 
Babe had never been quite so svelte as this, even in his 
puppyhood; never displayed quite so soulful a mien: yet, 
on the whole, the New York art dealer had done marvel¬ 
ously well. Lessie, inconsolable till now, could smile once 
more, almost happily; perhaps she went so far as to 
identify the lightly clad maiden as a reincarnation of her 
own girlhood, so remote in fact, yet still so freshly re¬ 
cent in Lessie’s own mind. 

Apprehensiveness quickly repossessed her eyes, how¬ 
ever. “Selma says she wants to see you.” 


FRUSTRATION 


275 

“Selma! Ain’t she gone yet?” 

Lessie explained, “To-night’s her last night.” It was 
evident she did not concur in the waitress’s discharge. 

“Well, anyhow, I’m not a-goin’ to talk with her,” he 
asserted. “No amounta arguin’ or cryin’ can make me 
change my mind.” 

“But Selma says it’s not that, pa. Somethin’ else.” 

“Somethin’ else?” 

His wife nodded. “Somethin’ important, like. Says 
she’s got to see you for a few minutes.” 

A vague prefigurement of misfortune gnawed at Mc- 
Nicol’s heart. 

“Send her into the music room, then,” he directed. 
“I’ll make mighty short work of her, you can bet.” 

It must be set down, however, that the honors of the 
painful interview that ensued rested clearly with Selma. 
She was explicit, she was brazen. Arthur, it developed, 
had been guilty of a regrettable dalliance with her affec¬ 
tions. Did Mr. McNicol happen to remember it was just 
outside her bedroom that his nightgowned son had en¬ 
countered the burglars? There was plenty of other cor¬ 
roborative evidence, she indicated—a great deal of which 
would prove spicy reading if the case reached the criminal 
courts and the newspapers. 

“He promised to marry me, he did, an’ I can have 
him sent to state’s prison for five years.” 

McNicol was in a great fury. “That’s his lookout! 
If he’s done anything wrong, he’ll have to suffer for it. 
I wash my hands! But you’re the one who led him on, 
you—” A torrent of drab epithets, suitable for applica¬ 
tion to women of frail virtue, rushed to his lips. 

Selma’s highly colored, coarse-skinned features became 
more sullen. “If you think you’re helpin’ your case by 
callin’ me names-” 



276 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Git outa this house!” McNicol fulminated with a 
majestic sweep of the hand. 

The waitress stood up and played her trump card. 
“All right, I’ll go—but first I’ll tell your wife.” 

That final shot brought him down, surprisingly enough. 
For though he was aware of certain growing dissatisfac¬ 
tions with Lessie, though he was accustomed to belittle 
her in the secret recesses of his mind, there yet lurked 
in him, quite unsuspected, a powerful instinct of pro¬ 
tectiveness toward her. She would never recover from 
the news of her favorite child’s delinquency, and he 
found himself wanting intensely to ward off the mortal 
blow at any cost. 

He lowered his voice. “See my lawyer Monday,” he 
suggested, and gave her Artemas Bigelow’s address. “If 
you’re willin’ to be reasonable-” 

“Don’t you worry,” assured Selma, smiling with aston¬ 
ishing composure. “All I want’s fair treatment. I’m not 
sayin’ a word about the ten dollars your son borrowed 
off me; come to me an’ said he was broke, an’-” 

“Never mind about that. My lawyer ’ll settle with 
you.” He indicated the conference was over. 

But Selma eyed him approvingly. “You’re all right, 
Mr. McNicol. Sorry now I picked out Arthur, instead 
of you!” And she flounced out of the music room, tri¬ 
umphantly. 

“What was it, Welly?” solicited Lessie, anxiously. 

“Oh, nothin’ much,” he affected. “Somethin’ about 
givin’ her a job at the plant.” 

He turned shortly and began ascending the staircase 
toward Arthur’s room, afraid he might not be able to 
control his agitation. For, though he had once or twice 
felt an uneasy presentiment, the abrupt unveiling of the 
sordid fact came as an inexpressible shock to him. He 
was no fool, of course; he knew that such shameful iniqui- 





FRUSTRATION 


277 


ties occurred with other men and in other families. Yet 
he himself had always held aloof from such degradations, 
austerely, puritanically. 

A son of his stooping to unspeakable vulgarities—in 
his house, right under his nose—with a common hired 
girl! The strumpet had even insinuated that he, Mc- 
Nicol, would not have proved invulnerable to her seduc¬ 
tions. 

All at once, for no reason at all, he visualized the 
servants’ song service in the cook’s room in the cellar; 
saw again his son’s fascinated stare; heard the piercing 
tones of the baggage, Selma, as she sang: 

“Wash me in the blood of the La-a-amb, 

And I shall be whiter than snow.” 

He sighed deeply as he reached Arthur’s door. The 
thing was hurting him acutely, excruciatingly. There 
was nothing to do, obviously, but order his son from 
the house, strike the infamous name from his will. 

But the bedroom was already empty. McNicol, with 
an inexplicably poignant emotion, descried a pair of iron 
dumb-bells on the floor, under the bed; and on top of 
the dresser, a photograph of his son, stripped to the 
waist, gripping the dumb-bells and pressing his arms close 
against his chest to accentuate the size of his biceps. 
Arthur had always been that way—passionately interested 
in his muscular development. There was a second pic¬ 
ture, of an actress in tights—the sort of premium com¬ 
monly given away with packages of cigarettes. McNicol 
frowned more heavily; he seemed to remember having 
once discovered Arthur in the act of gazing speculatively 
at the marmoreal nymph in the hall below. 

On top of the dresser, also, he found a note, addressed 
to him and marked “Personal!” 


278 


THE RED-BLOOD 


My dear Father, 

Selma says she is going to tell you, so it is better for me 
to clear out. Sorry I’ve made you so much trouble. 

Say you’ve sent me off on a business trip, or anything you 
like. Don’t tell mother. Ill write her later. Maybe Til 
surprise you yet some day. Anyway, I won’t bother you any 
longer. 

Arthur. 


m 

On the way to Joe Cottrell’s Gratiot Avenue sample 
room that night, McNicol compelled himself to divulge 
the scandal to Artemas Bigelow. 

“That makes two of my children who’ve left the 
house,” he announced, grimly. “You’d almost think I 
w^as a bad father.” 

Bigelow was disposed to take the affair lightly. “Oh, 
Arthur ’ll turn out all right. Good stuff in him; just has 
to have his fling. That kind of thing happens oftener 
than you believe. Bet you did the same thing more’n 
once when you were his age. Probably still do, eh?” 
He poked McNicol familiarly in the ribs. 

“Never—in my whole life!” averred the outraged 
parent. The easy assumption of immorality rather 
startled him. 

“No? Honest Injun? What’s the matter with you, 
anyway?” the attorney bantered. “Well, rest easy. I’ll 
look after young Miss Delilah for you, all right. You’ll 
never hear from her again.” 

He pushed open the saloon door and rapidly strode 
past a cigar stand and through a pair of smaller swinging 
doors into the barroom proper. McNicol followed re¬ 
luctantly, and for a moment was bewildered by the spec¬ 
tacle that confronted his eyes. The long narrow inclo¬ 
sure was jammed with a vociferous, gesticulating Satur¬ 
day-night mob of roisterers. They clustered about the 


FRUSTRATION 


279 


bar at the left, two and three deep in places—and even 
more thickly at the free-lunch counter, where hot roast- 
beef sandwiches were being dispensed. The overflow 
eddied into quieter bayous among the tables and chairs 
along the right wall. It was curious to mark how the 
faces varied in expression; some of the revelers clasped 
each other warmly about the necks and roared out maud¬ 
lin badinage; others sipped whisky gravely, disconso¬ 
lately, with never a word. The layers of tobacco smoke 
were so dense that they could send vague shifting shadows 
across the bare floor; yet McNicol was able to discern 
immediately that all but a few of the celebrants were 
rough customers—hard-faced fellows who would just as 
lief cut a man’s throat as not. The pictures above the 
bar—prize fighters and one or two scantily draped bur¬ 
lesque queens—did not help to reassure him. A vicious 
and disquieting world! He had ventured inside such 
places scarcely a half dozen times since the morning he 
had dragged his dissolute father from the barroom of the 
Queen’s Inn—and not once in the past twenty years. 

“Let’s get outa here!” he urged Bigelow. “I can’t 
afford to be seen in a dive like this. Can’t we talk to 
Cottrell somewheres else?” 

“Oh, buck up!” retorted his companion. “Some of the 
best people in tow r n come here.” 

“Yeah—looks like it!” The initiate jerked his head 
contemptuously toward the crowded inclosure. To tell 
the truth, he had been somewhat surprised to find the 
town’s political magnate ensconced in such shabby head¬ 
quarters. 

Bigelow effected a precarious contact with the bar rail¬ 
ing. 

“What’s yours?” 

McNicol hesitated. “Ginger ale.” 

His convoy’s mouth opened in alarmed protest; but 


THE RED-BLOOD 


280 

at that instant a third individual approached. A some¬ 
what undersized person, this, and severely attentuated; 
attired neatly, but a thought too conspicuously, in a 
plaid suit, with a large diamond glittering from his scar¬ 
let four-in-hand. His features would have been excellent 
save for a nose whose bridge was scarred and flattened, 
as if it had been broken and improperly reset. 

Without a word he extended his hand to Artemas Bige¬ 
low; and his mouth, partly concealed by a slinking reddish 
mustache, relaxed into a confiding credulous smile. 
Usually, though, his expression was ineffably doleful and 
plaintive, his pale blue eyes sad with disillusion. 

“Why, hello, Joe!” Artemas Bigelow, by contrast, was 
effusiveness itself. “What ’ll you have?” 

McNicol realized that the insignificant little man, 
amazingly enough, was no one else than the redoubtable 
Joe Cottrell, the proprietor of this sink of depravity and 
the acknowledged political boss of the city. He could 
not help sensing the fact, in spite of all contradictory 
appearances, for he became aware that the glances of 
most of the hooligans in the room were converged upon 
Cottrell, furtively but very respectfully. For his own 
part, however, he cherished no such deference. He felt 
he could easily overawe this half-grown midget, compel 
him to agree to the closing of Cooper Street; if need be, 
catch him up by the heels and hurl him across his own 
saloon. 

Cottrell waved his dissent. “No, thanks,” he answered 
Bigelow in soft, meticulously correct accents. “Too busy 
just now.” 

“But I want you to meet Mr. McNicol,” persisted the 
attorney. 

The boss’s hand encountered the neophite’s in a pneu¬ 
matic clasp. His eyes, however, alighted inquiringly 
upon a boisterous young jingo in an adjacent group. 


FRUSTRATION 


281 


“Shut your mouth/’ this person was brawling, “or I’ll 
shoot up th’ whole damn’ place!” 

McNicol observed a faint luminance come into Cot¬ 
trell’s mournful eyes, and a scarcely perceptible dilation 
of his nostrils. The little man stepped quickly up to the 
trouble maker. 

“Time for you to be goin’ home, sonny,” he said, 
crisply. 

All at once the tumult of the room had dropped into 
a dead hush. By some odd telepathy, everybody became 
instantly conscious of the altercation. The belligerent 
youth swung around to face the proprietor. 

“Quick now!” bade Cottrell, his voice even more inci¬ 
sive. 

The swaggerer, however, had no intention of being 
thus easily humiliated by an opponent thirty years older 
and eight inches shorter. As Cottrell reached for his 
arm, he took one stride backward and his hand darted 
toward his hip pocket. 

“Look out!” a voice yelled, and there was a precipitate 
scrambling for cover. 

But McNicol, not so well versed in saloon brawls, re¬ 
mained dazedly inert. Something happened, so rapidly 
that his eye could not detect its precise character. Joe 
Cottrell’s shoulder seemed to move—and the foolhardy 
young Goliath fell backward on the floor with an astonish¬ 
ing impact; next, at a signal from the victor, his pros¬ 
trate hulk was dragged from view by two bartenders, 
much as a dead bull is removed from the crowded amphi¬ 
theater. 

The diminutive boss dusted the offensive contact from 
his hand and returned to McNicol with an apologetic 
air. 

“Happy to meet you,” he resumed, impersonally. 

Artemas Bigelow, his moon face still pale, broached 


282 


THE RED-BLOOD 


their mission. “We want to have a little talk with you, 
Joe—you know, about that Cooper Street deal.” 

Cottrell had seemingly not identified his distinguished 
visitor; but even now he did not appear greatly im¬ 
pressed. 

“Why don’t you go up to the Annex?” he suggested, 
confidentially. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.” 

On the dark staircase Bigelow took his charge severely 
to task. 

“Lucky Joe didn’t hear you ordering ginger ale. You 
got t’ loosen up, be a good fellow. If Cottrell don’t like 
you, he’ll snap his fingers in your face, no matter who 
you are; but if he does like you, you can have any¬ 
thing he’s got.” 

McNicol absorbed this advice without making his usual 
self-confident retort. He had not fully recuperated, in 
fact, from the breath-taking tour de force he had just 
witnessed. 

The second-floor Annex was a large room at the rear 
of the building, reserved, apparently, for Cottrell’s more 
favored patrons. Here, indeed, one encountered a costly 
luxury that well-nigh rivaled that of the Mausoleum itself: 
rugs, crystal chandeliers, a piano, easy chairs, even oil 
paintings. Of these, the largest depicted a nude woman 
voluptuously reclining on a couch—a spectacle that 
aroused McNicol’s greatest abhorrence, yet curiously in¬ 
terested him. He was exceedingly uneasy. What if 
Lessie should see him now? What if any of his business 
customers and associates, his fellow church members, 
should find out he had sat in this wicked room—nay more, 
had actually drunk beer? Yet here he must remain, under 
strictest injunctions to pretend that he was as profligate 
as any of the carousers who surrounded him. 

It was after eleven o’clock before Cottrell entered the 



FRUSTRATION 283 

Annex, and half an hour later when he finally sat down 
with them. 

“We’ve been talking about your pictures,” initiated 
Bigelow tactfully. 

The boss smiled childishly. “Pretty good, aren’t 
they?” It was palpable he took a very personal pride 
in the room’s furnishings. “Just picked up another one,” 
he recollected with a collector’s enthusiasm. “Like to 
see it?” 

He conducted them to a small office next door and un¬ 
rolled a canvas. 

McNicol’s eyes bulged out. “My God! That’s mine!” 

“Yours?” said Cottrell, softly. “I don’t think so.” 

“It’s my Rubens, I tell you!” McNicol ignored Bige¬ 
low’s restraining gesture. “Stolen outa my house six 
weeks ago, it was, with a lot of other valuables.” 

His host betrayed a melancholy regret. “Too bad—I 
sorta liked it. This yours, too?” He fished a newspaper 
package out of a waste basket and unwrapped the Rem¬ 
brandt. 

“Certainly is!” 

“Well, pretty lucky you came in. I was just going 
to throw this one away—not much good. But the other 
one—” He smiled sadly. “Well, I don’t know that it’d 
go so well with my other pictures, anyhow.” 

McNicol was overjoyed. “You mean you’ll give ’em 
back to me?” 

“Guess I’ll have to. My loss. Might ’ve known 
better.” But Cottrell locked the office door and led them 
back to their table somberly. 

“Say! ” he abruptly reverted. “What else did you lose?” 

“Silverware, mostly.” 

“ ’Fraid I can’t help you much there.” Then the boss 
explained, quite casually: “You see, my men don’t touch 
any of that sort of stuff. All they take is money and 



284 


THE RED-BLOOD 


jewelry. But I’ll inquire around—see what I can do 
for you.” Then he came to the point at issue. “Now 
about Cooper Street.” 

“We feel that the public interests couldn’t possibly be 
jeopardized,” began Bigelow in his best professional man¬ 
ner, “and that-” 

The boss checked him good-naturedly. “Never mind 
the arguments, old man. Now here’s the situation: I un¬ 
derstand how you feel about giving the boys in the Coun¬ 
cil a little rake-off. Same time, they need the money— 
and you’re getting a lot of land for nothing.” His in¬ 
scrutable, poker eyes rested appraisingly upon his guests. 
“Now suppose I give those pictures back to you—mind 
you, I don’t have to, either. And suppose I locate that 
silverware. How much of a reward is it worth? A 
thousand dollars, easy, eh? Well, why not turn the re¬ 
ward over to me? You needn’t know what happens to 
your money—but the Council ’ll close Cooper Street at 
its next meeting. That clear?” 

McNicol still had little liking for the proposal; it was 
simply a polite method of bribery. At the same time, he 
reflected, it was certainly w r orth a thousand dollars to him 
to get back stolen property worth forty or fifty thousand 
—to say nothing of having Cooper Street closed. Most 
persuasive of all, however, was the effect of Cottrell’s 
scrutiny upon him: morose as he habitually seemed, the 
boss nevertheless had the rare and precious faculty, when 
he chose to exercise it, of conveying to the person he 
wished to influence a certain intimation of high regard, 
of sincere helpfulness. 

“That’s all right with me,” said McNicol, somewhat 
to his own surprise; then he stipulated, cautiously, “Pro¬ 
vided I get my silver back.” 

“Certainly,” agreed Cottrell. “I’ll see it’s returned 
within a week.” 

Which was precisely the miracle that eventuated. 



CHAPTER IV 


ENTICEMENT 

I 

F OR some four months now—since the day of the 
New Year’s reception, to be exact—he had become 
increasingly restless and unhappy, increasingly aware of 
his apparent futility and impotence. He, McNicol, the 
great captain of industry, forced to bend the knee to a 
common saloon keeper, whenever he wanted any political 
favors! That one episode seemed to typify the whole 
vexing situation. He realized vaguely that something 
was amiss; he felt intolerably muzzled; yet he had not 
been able to penetrate to the precise nature of his 
predicament. 

It was three weeks after his unrighteous compact with 
Joe Cottrell, and the middle of May, when he achieved 
his first clear inkling. He had gone downtown in the fore¬ 
noon, to engage passage to Europe for Lessie, Beatrice, 
and himself a fortnight later, in accordance with their 
long-talked-of plans. On the way from the ticket agent’s 
emporium to his office he found his itinerary blocked by 
the vanguard of a parade. First, a platoon of mounted 
police, next a band, then a half dozen open carriages. In 
the first of these there stood a profoundly bowing person¬ 
age whom he instantly recognized as the Governor of the 
State; beside him sat the Mayor, almost equally mag¬ 
nificent. McNicol remembered now: some public cere¬ 
mony, the accurate details of which he could not recall. 

285 


286 


THE RED-BLOOD 


More than a little put out by the delay, at first, he now 
found himself strangely fascinated by the spectacle. All 
this infectious music, this glittering pomp; this great man 
nodding with gracious beneficence to the salvos of fealty. 
Last of all, this sweaty, vociferous mob that thronged 
the sidewalk, eager to shriek its deathless reverence for 
the exalted ruler of its destiny. 

McNicol had caught his breath, enviously. If only it 
were he, complacently bowing from that magical car¬ 
riage! And that somehow was his rightful place, he con¬ 
sidered. Actually, however, he was but an indistinguish¬ 
able insignificant unit in the crowd. Actually he was not 
the Governor. So far as public esteem was concerned, he 
counted for naught. All at once, for the first time in his 
life, he sensed the allure of the mystical mirage men call 
popularity. 

And now T , seated at his desk, the spell was still strong 
upon him. He felt cheated. 

A package lay before him and he unwrapped it, 
mechanically, till he perceived two large books with shin¬ 
ing gold titles: 

“Leading Men of Detroit.” 

Here, providentially, was nutriment for his starved self¬ 
esteem! He opened one of the lavish volumes eagerly. 
Here, verily, the proof of his real renown, adjudged not 
by a bawling rabble of commoners, but by the very dis¬ 
criminating young chap who had been so impressed by 
McNicol’s splendid achievements. 

Yes, indeed. 

The front page bore the photograph and biography 
of that usurping Governor whom he had lately been eying 
so jealously. 

“I s’pose they had t’ give him first place,” he admitted, 
grudgingly. 

Second appeared the two United States Senators, and 


ENTICEMENT 


287 

then Mayor Pingree—just as the young solicitor had said. 
McNicol turned the following page in high expectancy; 
but, oddly enough, it did not show forth his lineaments 
at all, but those of some minor city official. 

He could not find his photograph anywhere in the next 
few pages, in fact; and sought the index in the rear of 
the volume, with some annoyance. 

Yes, here it was: “McNicol, W. D., 347.” 

He reverted to the body of the book with growing dis¬ 
quietude. There must be some mistake—page 347 was 
well toward the rear. At length he found the place, and 
stared stonily. His picture was there, beyond all possi¬ 
bility of error; but it was only one of four on the page! 
As if the printer had become weary and intended to dis¬ 
pose of smaller fry in wholesale lots. 

And now McNicol noted with unbelieving eyes that 
next to him on the sheet appeared the narrow-headed octo¬ 
genarian likeness of Cyrus Rorick, his former employer— 
still alive and puttering over his little one-horse busi¬ 
ness. Rorick and McNicol, side by side, bracketed to¬ 
gether as if of equal importance to the world. 

But an even more pitiless thrust lancinated his vitals 
when he read his biography, boiled down to a quarter page. 
For he was heralded forth as Wellington Dennison Mac- 
Nichol. MacNichol! 

It did not occur to him that of the five hundred De¬ 
troiters who were this very day anxiously perusing copies 
of “Leading Men,” no less than four hundred and ninety 
were arriving at the bitter conviction that they too had 
been outrageously slighted. 

McNicoFs mordant virulence ebbed away. The sense 
of utter ineptitude which had been gradually gathering 
bulk within him seemed ail at once to focus into an irre¬ 
sistible tidal wave. For a few moments he felt himself 


288 


THE RED-BLOOD 


inundated, swept off his feet—then at last, there came a 
flash of perspicuity and he gained his true bearings. 

He had been mistaken in believing he had reached all 
three of his goals. Marriage, yes—and wealth: these 
achievements were indisputable. But the melancholy fact 
came home—he was not famous. A certain degree of 
power was his to wield, but only within the sphere of his 
pharmaceutical business. In the more spacious world 
beyond he counted for nothing. He was not popular, 
he was not even known. In short, a nonentity. And 
all these recent stinging adversities—perhaps a jealous 
Fate had dispatched them to mock him for his vain boast¬ 
ing. 

Yes, that was the whole trouble, he saw now—he was 
not a Great Man. And suddenly he was suffused with an 
acute and incredibly poignant longing to become such a 
one. 


n 

As if in answer to this fervent wash, there promptly 
hobbled into view the shabby figure of a Civil War 
veteran whom McNicol knew slightly through his some¬ 
what inactive membership in one of the local G. A. R. 
posts. 

The comrade settled into an armchair, deposited his 
stout cane against the desk, blew his nose vigorously, and 
came to the portentous point. 

“I been delegated by the committee in charge of the 
parade t’ notify you, officially, you been unanimously 
selected t’ act as Grand Marshal.’’ 

McNicol, who had braced himself to refuse the cus¬ 
tomary comradely petition for a loan, now became faintly 
interested. 

“What parade you talkin’ of?” 



ENTICEMENT 289 

The veteran manifested incredulity. “Why, the Deco¬ 
ration Day parade, o’ course!” 

“Well, now.” The suggestion had its charms. 
“What’s a Grand Marshal have to do, anyhow?” 

“Not much,” vouchsafed the delegate. “Chiefly 
hon’ary. Each year the boys pick out some prominent 
member of one-a the posts.” 

“Yes, but what’d I have to do?” 

“I’m a-telling y’—nothin’ much, ’cept ride at the head 
of the procession.” 

The head of the procession! Into McNicol’s brain 
flitted the picture of the parade he had witnessed but an 
hour ago: the band, the howling populace, the illustrious 
presence of the governor; and instantly he visualized him¬ 
self, a proud figure, leading a much statelier pageant. 

“At the head, you say?” he sought confirmation. 

The country’s defender nodded. “Right behind the 
band.” 

McNicol chanced just then to observe his two copies 
of “Leading Men of Detroit,” still lying on his desk, and 
the painful association bred a certain wariness in him. 

“How much will it cost me?” he demanded, bluntly. 

The veteran grinned weakly. “Not a penny—unless 
you say so. Course, they’s certain expenses t’ be met— 
bands, carriages f’r the boys who ain’t able to walk— 
that sorta thing. The posts usually look after all that, 
but this year there’s a deficit.” 

“How much?” pursued the candidate for glory. 

“Well, I reckon five hundred dollars’d be ’bout right.” 

McNicol was glad he had not yet accepted. 

“I’d be glad to help out, of course,” he affected, “but 
I got my tickets to Europe all bought for the twenty- 
ninth. ’Fraid I won’t be here.” 

“Say, that’s too bad, now!” commiserated the mes¬ 
senger. “It’s a mighty big honor—git your picture in all 



THE RED-BLOOD 


290 

the papers, y’ know. Couldn’t y’ change your tickets?” 

“I’ll find out.” Here was a welcome opportunity to 
think the matter over. “Let y’ know to-morrow 
mornin’.” 

His visitor paused at the door. “Even if you can’t 
serve, you might still help out on that deficit.” 

That was the rub, McNicol reasoned. He could hardly 
escape now from some sort of a contribution; and if the 
affair was going to cost him money, anyway, why not 
have the luster as well? There would be no difficulty 
about postponing his trip a week, he was certain. The 
more he considered the Heaven-sent opportunity, the more 
he felt inclined to embrace it. 

Artemas Bigelow, whom he consulted that afternoon, 
was unkind enough to throw cold water. 

“No, I wouldn’t do it,” he advised. “You’re not one 
to go in for cheap showy things like that. Leave that 
kind of buncombe to the lightweights and the politicians.” 

McNicol shook his head. “You were the one who ad¬ 
vised me t’ go into politics, remember? Well, seein’s 
how you’re always right ’bout everything, I guess I will 
go into politics.” 

Bigelow’s sagacious face mirrored the utmost concern. 
“I told you to go into politics? Never!” 

“Yes, you did, too.” 

“If I said that, I must have been joking.” 

“Jokin’ or no jokin’, that’s what I’m a-goin’ to do.” 
McNicol’s program rapidly took form even as he talked. 
“Guess I’ll run for governor this fall.” 

“Politics,” said Bigelow, inadvertently copying his 
client’s phraseology of three weeks earlier, “is a dirty 
mess.” 

McNicol neatly rationalized his new craving for kudos . 

“Then it becomes the duty of all good citizens to 
help clean up the mess,” he pronounced solemnly, and 


ENTICEMENT 291 

went out to telephone his acceptance of the grand mar- 
shalship. 

m 

This glamorous notion, once having invested his imagi¬ 
nation, waxed with astonishing celerity into a fixed obses¬ 
sion. He took to statesmanlike posturing in front of the 
mirror; surveyed with complacency his new white bow 
tie—identical with the Governor’s. Lessie, quite aglow 
over her husband’s preferment, spent hours renovating his 
captain’s uniform and letting out the vest and trousers 
to accommodate his increased girth; his appearance in 
the refurbished garments, they both agreed, was spiritedly 
martial. 

The precise technique of being elected to the governor¬ 
ship, however, remained recondite. The feat seemed 
entirely possible, theoretically. In every way he was a 
logical and superior candidate. But just how did one 
go about such things? How make a start? 

McNicol spent the next fortnight in a condition of 
eager receptivity, listening intently for the people’s call; 
then, hearing nothing, and being impatient for action, he 
went boldly to Joe Cottrell for enlightenment in methods 
of procedure. 

The boss, he ascertained from a barkeeper, was at his 
home with an attack of la grippe —quite able, however, 
to receive visitors. McNicol jotted down the address and 
made his way thither, enormously relieved that the inter¬ 
view need not occur in the saloon: that environment would 
hardly have been appropriate for the inception of any 
lofty emprise such as his. For he had resolved more or 
less vaguely that his political career should be one of 
high-mindedness and heroic integrity. Joe Cottrell would 
have to understand, first as last, that there were to be no 
crooked dealings, no unholy compacts—that he, McNicol., 


292 


THE RED-BLOOD 


would assume office wholly independent, free from all 
nefarious entanglements. 

The invalid greeted his visitor with one of his intimate, 
confiding smiles, as if no other dispensation could pos¬ 
sibly have afforded him quite such piquant pleasure. Mc- 
Nicol was greatly heartened. Artemas Bigelow had 
assured him that the boss liked him, and now he was 
convinced of the fact. Cottrell would surely be willing 
to give him pointers, just as a matter of friendship, with¬ 
out any hope of nrofit to himself. 

“Certain people have been urging me to go into politics,” 
he began, with an air of reluctant coercion. “I feel in a 
way I owe a duty to the Republican party of this great 
state-” 

“That’s right. The way I like t’ hear a man talk,” 
encouraged the sick man with very evident sympathy. 
“If more citizens of your class felt like you, politics would 
be on a much higher level. If there’s anything I can do 
to help you, just let me know.” Again that irradiation of 
personal regard, of a peculiar friendliness reserved for 
McNicol alone. 

His caller warmed with gratification. This was even 
better luck than he had anticipated. “To tell you the 
truth, that’s what I came for t’-day.” 

“Fine!” Cottrell’s meek face contrived an excessive 
interest. “Well, just what is it you have in mind?” 

“I want to make the race for Governor this fall.” 

“You mean against Pingree?” 

McNicoPs discomfiture was pathetic. “He ain’t a-goin’ 
t’ run, is he?” 

“Yes, thank God!” the boss permitted himself to exult. 
“I’ll have him off my hands.” Then, swiftly recalling the 
immediate issue, “Would anything else do?” 

The receptive candidate gathered his forces. “Well, 
there’s the U. S. Senate.” 



ENTICEMENT 


2 93 

“But of course you know no Senator’s to be elected 
for another two years.” 

“That’s so.” He had not known, as a matter of fact. 
All his elaborate designs for a scintillant career seemed 
abruptly to crumble. “Well, if Ping’s a-going to be Gov¬ 
ernor, who’ll be the next mayor?” 

Cottrell looked regretful. “I’m afraid that’s all fixed. 
You’re too late—I’m already committed on the mayor¬ 
alty.” 

“Well, I don’t much believe I’d want to be mayor, 
anyhow,” confessed McNicol, disconsolately. “Ain’t much 
to that.” The office was by no means worthy of his 
talents. 

“I think we might hope to put you in as an alderman,” 
reflected Cottrell. “That’s the best way to start in poli¬ 
tics, anyway—at the very bottom, in the Common 
Council.” 

A boodle alderman! The aspirant for fame stared at 
his mentor. 

“You see,” the boss explicated, “you’re not identified 
with the party machinery at all.” 

McNicol revealed his deep hurt. “I voted the straight 
Republican ticket for the las’ thirty years.” 

“I mean actively identified. The boys don’t know you; 
you’ve never done any organization work. So far as I 
know, you’ve never even contributed to a campaign fund.” 

“Well, I never been interested before.” He regretted 
now that he had always curtly refused his party’s requi¬ 
sitions. “But if I get into politics, I’ll fork over my 
share.” 

Just discernibly, Cottrell’s faded eyes glittered and his 
nostrils quivered, precisely as at the moment of squelch¬ 
ing the young rowdy in his barroom. 

“Good!” he approved. “I’d do that right away. We’ll 


294 THE RED-BLOOD 

put you to work this fall; might fit you in as campaign 
treasurer. 5 ’ 

Crushed ambition revived slightly. “I was plannin’ to 
go to Europe in a couple of weeks, but if you think-” 

“No—go ahead. Won’t be much stirring till Septem¬ 
ber. You’ll be back by then, and we’ll start building up 
your public reputation.” 

McXicol coughed. It came to him that he was not 
being taken at his true value. 

“Guess mebbe you don’t realize I got quite a reputation 
already. Guess mebbe you don’t know I been picked out 
to act as Grand Marshal of the big parade on Decoration 
Day.” 

Cottrell seemed considerably impressed. 

“Glad to hear it.” He assayed the novice anew, with 
impeccable gravity. “Glad we had this talk, too. I’ll 
certainly bear you in mind. Maybe something ’ll turn 
up for you sooner than we expect. I might even be able 
to run you for something this fall.” 

IV 

The parade, for McNicol, was quite a success. It 
would have been a complete triumph, save for one vexa¬ 
tious incident. 

At ten o’clock, the hour appointed for starting, the 
Grand Marshal, accompanied by his aides, swept majes¬ 
tically past the various units assembled along Jefferson 
Avenue east of Russell Street. The inspection corrobo¬ 
rated the fact that everything was in perfect order. First, 
the squad of mounted police; and the handsomely accou¬ 
tered band, its silver instruments flashing bravely in the 
warm sunlight. Then the several G. A. R. posts, with 
their complement of a thousand senescent veterans—some 
erect, still defying the blight of cumulative years; some 



ENTICEMENT 


295 


bent and feeble, scores of them propped up on canes, and 
not a few on crutches: but every last one of them deter¬ 
mined to march two miles to the reviewing stand at Grand 
Circus Park, or perish in the attempt. Many of them 
saluted McNicol as he passed, and he was not so wrapped 
in his own lofty estate as to be quite insensible to the 
pathos of this spectacle of man's swift transience. 

Then more bands, the state militia, a detachment of 
regulars from Fort Wayne. The fourth and hnal section 
of the procession was comprised of various private organ¬ 
izations, some military, some fraternal. Most of them 
were unimpressive assortments of mere stragglers, poorly 
equipped and sadly lacking in snap and esprit; the effect, 
after the preceding sections, was decidedly anticiimactic. 

At the very end of the line, just as he was about to 
gallop back to the van, McNicol was suddenly confronted 
by a rufous individual with fierce mustachios, mounted on 
an unbelievably lanky sorrel horse. This person made it 
known in broken but vehement English that he was greatly 
dissatisfied with the humble position allotted to his com¬ 
mand; he demanded his place in the sun. 

The Grand Marshal noted the unit—the sorriest collec¬ 
tion he had yet seen, evidently some Polish detachment. 
This ignominious rear guard was attired in ill-fitting civil¬ 
ian clothing; its only pretense of uniform was a broad and 
flaming red sash tied about the waist. 

“Who are you?” 

“Kosciusko Reserves,” said their commander, proudly. 

“Well, stay where you are. This is the position assigned 
to you,” McNicol ordered brusquely, then hurried back 
to his own proud station and waved a signal to the cap¬ 
tain of mounted police. 

The parade began. 

A rare and enravishing experience, this: promenading 
with dignified hauteur at the head of a superb python- 


THE RED-BLOOD 


296 

like procession. He was the undisputed master of four 
thousand perspiring souls. The common herd, packed 
deep along the street, gazed at him ecstatically, even as 
they had at that less illustrious Governor, two weeks ago. 
And he knew himself now as an anointed leader of men, 
one destined to direct the destinies of millions. A noble 
figure, assuredly. He rode easily the magnificent saddle 
horse he had purchased for the occasion. This spirited 
beast, so antithetical to the Kosciuskoan bag-of-bones, 
pranced and caracoled, its nostrils dilated to the blaring of 
the adjacent band; but McNicol sat his saddle upright 
and unperturbed—as becomes a Great Man. 

“Worth five hundred dollars any day, this is,” he ap¬ 
praised. 

His sole regret was that his span was passing so rapidly. 
Already, the mounted police were sweeping into Wood¬ 
ward Avenue. As he himself made the turn, he looked 
back over the hosts still on Jefferson Avenue, perceived 
the splendid panorama of flying banners and marching 
men. 

Envisaged, too, an unscheduled phenomenon: the beet¬ 
faced leader of the Kosciusko Reserves was but a scant 
hundred feet to the rear now, at the head of a platoon of 
G. A. R. veterans. McNicol gaped. The Polish contin¬ 
gent was nowhere visible, but the red sash and carroty 
steed of its commander were unmistakable. Apparently 
he had left his men to their humiliating fate, and himself 
pushed forward to more conspicuous realms. 

The Grand Marshal gestured one of his aides alongside. 

“Send that skunk back where he belongs.” 

The interloper retired with evident bad grace and Mc¬ 
Nicol felt free to enjoy himself once more. 

Grand Circus Park was only a block away now. He 
could make out the bedizened reviewing stand, where the 
Governor himself, Mayor Pingree, and a hundred other 


ENTICEMENT 


297 

fortunate individuals awaited to do him homage. He sat 
more erect, expanded his chest to its maximum cubic 
capacity. An electric sense of aliveness tingled through 
him. 

“There’s that Polack again,” cried the aide. 

McNicol glanced back. Not to be denied his aspira¬ 
tions, the commander of the Kosciuskoan detachment had 
crept up again—even nearer; he was only fifty feet back 
now. Palpably it was too late to do anything. McNicol 
forced himself to concentrate upon the reviewing stand; 
already he could see the gubernatorial features turned 
expectantly upon him. 

Then, ail at once, a red sash blurred past on a clatter¬ 
ing, loose-jointed sorrel mount, and did not settle info high 
visibility again until it had passed the band and achieved 
its rightful place in the Scheme of Things—at the very 
head of the parade. Polish autonomy was vindicated— 
Kosciusko avenged. His disciple it was, and not Mc¬ 
Nicol, who first gravely acknowledged the enthusiastic 
applause of the reviewing stand: Grand Marshal in every¬ 
thing but name, without having paid any fraction of five 
hundred dollars for the privilege. 


CHAPTER V 


THE SHORN LAMB 


I 


FTER three months devoted to ingurgitating his way 



iT across Europe under the benevolent despotism of 
Messrs. Cook & Son, McNicol descried the Statue of 
Liberty again, the first week of September, with emotions 
of the liveliest satisfaction and anticipation. 

“Give me the good old U. S. A., every time,” he shouted 
to Lessie as their ocean liner steamed majestically up 
New York harbor. “Them foreigners ain’t in it with us; 
I wouldn’t give a nickel for the whole caboodle.” 

His wife, however, though exceedingly contented at 
the prospect of returning to the familiar comforts of home, 
cherished no such contempt for the attractions of the Old 
World. She had been quite overawed by what the guides 
told her of the art treasures of Rome and Paris; and in 
the latter capital, which she had always viewed as the 
modern Gomorrah, she had actually been prevailed upon 
by that sophisticated cosmopolite, Charley Foss, to drink 
a glass of light wine. But the trip through Palestine 
remained for her the glorious apogee of the trip; she had 
brought back innumerable pictures for display to the 
Sunday school, a quart bottle of the waters of the River 
Jordan—yes, and even a tiny fragment of what was quite 
undoubtedly the true Cross. 

Beatrice, too, had been entranced—but without her 
mother’s reservations. She and Charley had struck up 
a great friendship—had “done” Paris together. One 


298 


THE SHORN LAMB 


299 


night—though even McNicol did not know this—the two 
of them had torn up their opera tickets and stolen off to 
the Folies Bergeres. Bee decided she had still undevel¬ 
oped possibilities as a siren. Paris was the place for her. 

But McNicol maintained from first to last a querulous 
attitude, eminently suitable to an American business mag¬ 
nate abroad. What principally annoyed him about Europe 
as a whole were the culinary stupidities. Why, a man 
couldn’t buy a good cup of coffee from one end to the 
other, nor a piece of pie, nor a decent cigar. The single 
episode that stood out in his mind like a solitary corrus- 
cating flash of light had to do with the Jungfrau: not the 
view, which he observed but inattentively; but the excel¬ 
lent luncheon he had eaten in the small inn at the top of 
the funicular—more explicitly, the incredible, marvelous 
dish of fresh strawberries that topped off the meal. Those 
strawberries represented the one wholly satisfying mem¬ 
ory Europe’s patient laborious centuries could store 
securely in McNicol’s brain. 

“Jiminy Chrismus! but they certainly tasted fine!” 
He smacked his lips in recollection. What a story to tell 
his friends at home! 

As the ship moved lethargically up the North River, 
he joined his fellow passengers in the contemplation of 
New York’s bristling sky line. And now an odd phenom¬ 
enon of chauvinism obtruded: New York from the Bay, 
New York as an integral part of his native land, New 
York as against Europe, had a moment since stirred in 
him the most pungent patriotism; but now, at close range, 
safely within the country’s portals, he deemed the metrop¬ 
olis not quite so admirable. To a European he would still 
have defended New York as the most splendid city in the 
world; but not to a fellow countryman. His viewpoint, 
all in an instant, became that of the envious provincial, 
criticizing from within. 


300 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“New York ain’t so much,” he told himself. “A lot of 
smart Alecks, who think they own the rest of the country. 
I’d rather live in Detroit any day.” 

Detroit! The name evoked a sudden pang, half pride, 
half restless disquietude. What destiny awaited him 
there? The inception of a bedazzling political career? 
Or nothing at all? All at once, he bitterly regretted his 
European truancy. Why had he been fool enough to cut 
himself off for three long months from a situation so preg¬ 
nant with possibilities? Abroad, he had necessarily been 
out of touch with local developments. He knew about 
the nomination of McKinley and Bryan—and that was 
all. What had happened in Detroit, in Michigan? What 
had Joe Cottrell been up to? Had he forgotten or ignored 
his promise to do something for a hopeful aspirant? 

Probably. 

“You chump!” McNicol reviled himself again. “Now 
you’ll have to wait another two years.” Another two years 
of fretting impotence, of galling insignificance. 

But at the pier a messenger boy presented a telegram. 
McNicol tore it open eagerly, sentient of the rustling of 
wings. 

Nominated for mayor by Republican city convention this 
morning. Hearty congratulations. Your triumph at the polls 
in November is assured. 

Cottrell. 

After one instant of suffocating rapture, the anointed 
hero handed the message to Lessie, with elaborate care¬ 
lessness. 

“My, my! Now that’s red nice, pa—ain’t it?” 

McNicol, his brow already clouded with disinclination, 
unburdened himself of a statesmanlike utterance: 

“I don’t want to be mayor,” he announced. “No, sir; 



THE SHORN LAMB 


301 

not a speck. But no man has the right to refuse the call 
of the people.” 

And intuitively he thrust his right hand inside the lapel 
of his coat, with precisely the adequate gesture. 

n 

Each of the morning papers, he found upon his arrival 
in Detroit next morning, carried a two-column photograph 
of him and long accounts of the convention. But greatly 
to his surprise, there was no delegation at the station to 
meet him. He had sat up most of the night on the train, 
preparing his statement of acceptance for delivery to a 
crowd of hurrahing partisans. Perhaps there would be a 
band and a triumphal parade through the downtown 
streets. But no one appeared save Artemas Bigelow and 
two reporters. 

McNicol, slightly relieved as well as disappointed, was 
about to read his oration to the gentlemen of the press, 
when Bigelow intervened. 

“Call at my office this noon,” he said tersely, without 
even consulting the candidate. “We’ll have a statement 
ready by then.” 

To his slightly nettled client, he vouchsafed: 

“No sense in reading anything to those chaps. They 
aren’t shorthand reporters; they’d just get the thing all 
garbled. Better give each one a typewritten copy—then 
there’s no chance of misquotation. Besides, now that 
you’re a public figure, it’s best to be very cautious about 
wdiat you say.” 

At his office, he deigned to read McNicol’s speech: 

My Fellow Citizens: 

In accepting the Republican nomination for mayor of this 
great city of ours, I feel little personal pride, but on the con¬ 
trary, a feeling of the greatest responsibility. This is an impor- 


3 02 


THE RED-BLOOD 


tant crisis in the history of Detroit. The great Republican 
party can point with pride to the record of its great mayor, 
Hazen S. Pingree, and the question now before us is whether 
we shall go forward in his illustrious footsteps or turn back 
to the corrupt leadership of the Democratic party. 

It is for you to decide, my fellow citizens. So far as I am 
concerned, the office has sought the man. I shall make no 
campaign. I will have no machine. If I am elected I shall 
be free of all boss rule and my only object will be to serve 
the people of this great city. Also, if elected, I shall serve 
but one term, because I cannot help but feel that it is a dan¬ 
gerous thing for one man to hold the same office too long. 

Fellow citizens, this great question rests with you. Let the 
people choose. 

McNicol strove to conceal his pride. “Well—that all 
right?” 

“Not bad.” Bigelow looked puzzled. “Who wrote it 
for you?” 

“I wrote it myself,” the candidate averred, with heat. 

“Well, I guess it ’ll do.” Bigelow gave the statement 
to one of his stenographers for transcription. “It’s short, 
anyhow.” 

“And now,” quoth McNicol, “tell me just how it hap¬ 
pened.” 

“God knows! The convention met two days ago with¬ 
out any particular candidate in view, according to the 
papers. Your name began to be mentioned all of a sudden, 
and, lo and behold! you went through on the first ballot. 
Nobody seems to know how your boom got started. 
Here’s what one of last night’s papers said.” He picked 
up a clipping. “ ‘The explanation of McNicol’s unfore¬ 
seen nomination, according to those on the inside, was 
that the Republican treasury was low and some candidate 
whose leg could be pulled was needed. Boss Cottrell 
cast his eagle eye over the town and picked out McNicol 


THE SHORN LAMB 


303 

as the sacrificial lamb, he being out of town and unable 
to protest.’ ” 

The lamb betrayed some apprehension. “What paper 
said that?” 

“The Herald .” 

“But that’s Democratic, ain’t it?” 

“Sure thing. That’s the sort of stuff the Herald’s going 
to print about you every day from now on till election.” 

“But what they say don’t count! They’re a-workin’ 
for the other side. By the way, who the Democrats got 
up against me?” It was the first time he had thought 
to ask. 

“Jim Pettit.” Bigelow divulged the name gloomily. 

“Pettit? Who’s Pettit?” 

“Don’t know who Jim Pettit is!” The attorney stared 
pityingly. “Well, I’ll tell you. Jim Pettit is at present an 
alderman from the first ward. Been in the Council ten 
years, in politics twenty. Record, pretty fair—at least 
there’s nothing definite against him. Known to every 
politician in town by his first name. A wire puller and 
fence builder from the word go. Protestant, Mason—but 
popular with the Catholics.” He broke off from his 
resume. “Not know Jim Pettit? Well, my boy, you’ll 
know him by November fifth, and you’ll know you’ve been 
in a good scrap, too.” 

“Well, I guess I can look after Mister Pettit, all right.” 
Secretly, McNicol did not take kindly to his attorney’s 
intimations. “But mebbe I better go have a talk with 
Cottrell.” 

“Good idea,” agreed Bigelow. “But I wouldn’t mix 
with him too much.” 

“I ain’t a-goin’ to. Cottrell nor nobody else is goin’ to 
run me. I’m absolutely independent.” 

“Still, seeing it was Cottrell who nominated you, don’t 
you think he’ll expect some say?” 


304 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Don’t make no difference what he expects.” McNicol 
arose with traces of annoyance. “All the same, mebbe 
he can give me a few pointers.” 

Artemas Bigelow still scrutinized his friend with an 
odd sadness. 

“Understand, Mac: if you go into this thing, I’m going 
with you just as strong as I can. But, seriously, hadn’t 
you better think things over? You’re getting mixed up in 
a filthy business. You’re playing a game you don’t know 
the rules of. And what will you get out of it even if 
you do win? You don’t honestly give a damn about the 
dear people; you feel just as I do—that men of brains 
and character pull themselves out of the mass, just as 
you and I’ve had to do; the others, the majority who never 
get out of the mud, are weaklings and quitters who don’t 
count and whom nobody can help, anyway. ‘The dear 
people!’ For God’s sake, don’t spend your life truckling 
for votes. Politics is just a game for alternately tickling 
and hornswoggling the rabble. There’d be no satisfac¬ 
tion in that sport for an individual of your capacity.” 
He spoke supplicatingly. “My advice is—stay out; de¬ 
cline the nomination.” 

To McNicol this tirade seemed nothing but a personal 
affront to his own ambitions. “Politics may be like that 
to other men,” he announced, curtly, with lofty emphasis. 
“But to me it is an opportunity to serve my fellow 
citizens.” 

In high dudgeon, he stalked out, and made his way to 
Joe Cottrell’s sample room. 

As he turned in toward the door, he beheld the boss on 
the other side of the glass panel. His face lighted up, 
and he was about to enter the saloon when he observed 
that Cottrell was shaking his head emphatically and ges¬ 
turing him on his way. Considerably mystified, he walked 
slowly along Gratiot A 1 venue, and in a moment found him- 


THE SHORN LAMB 


305 

self overtaken by a youth whom he vaguely identified 
as the clerk of the cigar stand. 

“Come around the back way!” his conductor pre¬ 
scribed; then led him through an alley and up a dark 
staircase into the private office. 

Cottrell came in presently, closed and locked the door, 
still with his alarming air of imminent danger. 

“There’s a Herald reporter downstairs,” he explained. 
Then abruptly his arid face was transfigured by a naive 
and simple pleasure; he grasped his visitor’s hand in a 
soft warm embrace. 

“Congratulations! ” 

McNicol perceived that Cottrell had never before in 
his life been so delighted; his own heart warmed in re¬ 
sponse. Here was appreciation, here was appropriate 
homage. 

“I want to thank vou-” 

“Not at all!” Cottrell expostulated. “All I did was to 
suggest your name. The delegates did the rest. The 
party is fortunate to have such a leader as you. My only 
regret is that we couldn’t have offered you something 
bigger—but there’s time enough for that.” 

A faint remnant of Artemas Bigelow’s poisonous doubt 
lingered in McNicol’s mind. 

“You think I’ll be elected?” 

The boss almost laughed. “Elected? Why, it’s a 
cinch!” 

“Somebody was tellin’ me this Jim Pettit would be 
pretty hard to beat.” 

“My friend, somebody’s going to be telling you that 
ten times every day. Each afternoon the Herald will say 
you’re licked; and each morning the Sun will repeat it. 
Take my tip and don’t waste time on what the quitters 
say—or the Democrats.” He touched the candidate’s knee 
confidentially, but an odd, intimidating pin point of light 



THE RED-BLOOD 


306 

glinted from his eye. He even permitted himself one of 
his rare oaths. “Christ! You could beat Pettit to a 
frazzle even in an off year. But this is a presidential year. 
McKinley will carry Detroit by ten thousand votes. Pin- 
gree, by twenty thousand. Figure what that means to 
you—on the same ticket. You could drop five thousand 
Republican votes and still win. But you won’t; you’ll 
run even with the rest of the ticket, at least.” 

Of course! How absurdly simple! But you couldn’t 
expect an amateur like Artemas Bigelow to think of things 
like that. 

Cottrell felicitated his visitor, also, upon the letter of 
acceptance. 

“Fine! Shows you’re a born campaigner. That stuff 
about being free from all boss rule had exactly the right 
ring.” 

McNicol was embarrassed. It w r as a rather delicate 
situation; he did not want to offend Cottrell, yet he fully 
purposed being his own master in office. 

“Course that don’t mean I won’t listen to good advice,” 
he began, lamely. 

“No; you’re perfectly right. You’ve got to paddle your 
own canoe.” Cottrell solved the difficulty and doubled 
McNicol’s gratitude by his graceful self-effacement. 
“Now listen, Mac. You must steer clear of me from now 
on. If that Herald reporter had caught you in my saloon, 
or if anybody knew we two were in this room conferring 
together, you’d stand to lose that five thousand votes. 
You must not only stay away from me; you must attack 
me. It’s always sure-fire stuff to sail into the boss.” He 
smiled craftily. 

The candidate’s relief verged into anxiety. “But how 
’ll I know what t’ do? I ain’t had no experience in makin’ 
campaigns.” 

“Don’t make any campaign!” The points of light re- 


THE SHORN LAMB 


307 


glinted. “That’s what you promise in your letter of 
acceptance. And why should you, when you’re just going 
to be rolled into office on the Republican band wagon? 
It’s all right, of course, to open headquarters, and keep 
moving around. In a pinch, you can always get in touch 
with me through some go-between. Meantime, I’ll be 
working for you every minute, and so will all the boys.” 
He paused. “Now one thing more: the campaign 
treasury.” 

This topic was scarcely so agreeable; yet when McNicol 
stole out through the alley door of the saloon fifteen min¬ 
utes later, after having engaged to contribute ten thousand 
dollars toward swelling the sinews of war—for one cannot 
meet generosity with niggardliness!—he was still buoyed 
up by the certitude of easy victory. 

He could even say to himself: 

“A right fine fellow, Cottrell—offerin’ to step outa the 
way for me like that!” 


hi 

As he rode up Woodward Avenue one morning some two 
weeks later, and at length reached the contiguous areas 
in front of the City Hall, McNicol’s eyes, as usual, sought 
out the brick fagade of the Temple Theater building. 
Each morning he had the same sense of unreality until he 
reached this vantage point. Then swift reassurance always 
visited him. 

On the facade was displayed an enormous canvas sign 
in red and black. 


FOR MAYOR 
|X] WELLINGTON D. McNICOL 


The People’s Choice 




THE RED-BLOOD 


308 

At this particular moment a crew of workmen were 
engaged in suspending a second sign, under the first. 
McNicol dismissed his carriage and stood in the triangular 
plot of ground across the street from the theater building, 
watching the proceeding with ingenuous enchantment. 

The second sign, somewhat less heroic than its prede¬ 
cessor, slowly swung into place, so that he could scan its 
import. At the left it bore an imposing picture of himself; 
on the right, the announcement: 

Headquarters 

McNICOL-FOR-MAYOR CLUB 

“By Jiminy—that’s the ticket!” escaped involuntarily 
from his lips. Now more than ever he was proud of his 
sagacity in engaging the suite of rooms in the theater 
building, with its enormous facilities for outdoor adver¬ 
tising. Then quickly he glanced around at the other 
structures that hemmed in the City Hall and Campus Mar- 
tius, as if fearful that the night might have brought some 
new rivalry. But, no! Pictures of McKinley and Bryan, 
and of Pingree, were visible at intervals—none so large 
as his; and on the Hammond Building, diagonally across 
the area from where he stood, still hung the pitifully 
diminutive, already weather-beaten display-sign: 

VOTE FOR JAS. PETTIT FOR MAYOR 

“Pooh!” he scoffed, and continued on his way to the 
theater building. 

The McNicol headquarters consisted of one immense 
room, furnished with bare-looking chairs and tables, a 
telephone, a typewriter, vast stacks of pamphlets contain¬ 
ing the standard bearer’s photograph and letter of accept¬ 
ance, and in one corner his desk. He had seriously con¬ 
sidered partitioning off a private room for himself, but 


THE SHORN LAMB 


309 


had discarded the idea as undemocratic. There should be 
no favoritism here, he determined; no back doors for poli¬ 
ticians to creep in and out of; everything must be in the 
open. Rich and poor, the powerful and the humble, stood 
on an equal footing here, at least. There was no secre¬ 
tary, no campaign manager, to stand between the people 
and their candidate. McNicol himself was spending ten 
hours a day in the place, so that all who desired might 
have his ear. 

This particular morning he found Ellen Foss awaiting 
him by appointment. There w r as also an unknown male 
person with hangdog eyes. McNicol ascertained from the 
girl stenographer that the latter had arrived first; there¬ 
fore, with his new and godlike impartiality, he prescribed 
that Ellen must bide her turn. 

The hangdog male was not an entirely prepossessing 
person: he had not shaved recently, his eyes were muddy, 
and when he leaned confidentially close McNicol perforce 
inhaled the strong fumes of bad whisky. 

The stranger divulged his name. “You don’t know me,” 
he announced, redundantly, “but I been a great admirer 
of yours for many years. Seen you in the parade on— 
let’s see, was it the Fourth of July?” 

“Decoration Day.” 

“Sure enough. Well, Mr. McNicol, you don’t know 
it, but I been workin’ mighty hard f’r you over in the 
third ward, first precinct—an’ I know every voter down 
there. Ask anybody y’ meet who Frankie is, and they’ll 
tell y’. I want t’ see you elected; you’re the kind of a 
mayor this city needs.” 

“Thank you,” said the candidate with becoming mod¬ 
esty. 

“So I want t’ organize a little club f’r you—get up a big 
celebration an’ have you make a speech. Now, of course, 
I don’t want a cent f’r myself, y’ understan’, an’ if I had 


3io 


THE RED-BLOOD 


the money I’d pay f’r the whole thing outa my own pocket 
As it is, I’m givin’ my time free gratis. I thought mebbe 
you might feel like helpin’ the club out on the expense.’’ 

McNicol was in a quandary. He was publicly com¬ 
mitted against the use of money in his campaign, and he 
had flatly refused thus far to respond to begging letters 
and personal appeals for loans. But this case of Frankie 
seemed rather different. True, he had a dubious look; 
yet he seemed sincere in his esteem and he was willing to 
contribute his own services free of charge. What could 
be fairer? 

“How much will the club be needin’?” 

The petitioner gauged his victim expertly. “Well, say 
fifty dollars?” 

“All right,” acquiesced McNicol. “But mind you, I 
don’t want one penny of the money spent in saloons.” 

“In saloons!” Frankie was offended, obviously. “Cer- 
t’nly not! Stationery, rent, an’ things like that. If they’s 
anything left over, I’ll bring it back, so help me God!” 

“Here!” said the bounteous provider. “An’ help your¬ 
self to them pamphlets.” 

“Thanks. You just watch the first of the third on 
election day. Won’t be one vote against you!” 

Ellen Foss approached the throne with a quizzical smile. 

“And how does it feel to be famous?” 

He was a little afraid of her banter, as always. “I’m 
not thinkin’ of fame. I’m thinkin’ of my heavy respon¬ 
sibility to my fellow citizens.” 

“Well,” she smiled, “I only wish I had a vote.” 

“Oh, no—politics ain’t no place for a woman,” he 
hastened, gallantly. “She don’t want to mix in such 
things. It’s her duty to stay on a higher plane, to be an 
inspiration for some man.” His face clouded. “But it 
was about Mary I wanted to talk to you.” 

He showed Ellen an article in the Sun which dealt half 


THE SHORN LAMB 


311 

humorously with one of his daughter’s police-court ven- 
turings on behalf of some first offender; the article con¬ 
cluded with a pointed reference to the fact that she was 
the Republican candidate’s daughter. 

“This sort of thing’s hurtin’ me. And it don't look 
right for Mary to be livin’ away from home; that’s what 
they’ll be findin’ out next. I want to ask you if you can’t 
get her to stop her foolishness an’ come back to the house.” 

Ellen’s levity vanished. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve 
been urging her to do that very thing. I’ve already ironed 
out one difficulty for you: I took her through the biologi¬ 
cal laboratory this summer and convinced her the animals 
were treated humanely. The only sticking point now is 
the girls’ wages. As you know, she believes that immo¬ 
rality is largely a matter of economics.” 

The prudishness in him effected a deep magenta flush. 

“What right’s a girl in her position even thinkin’ ’bout 
such things?” 

Ellen’s tact was superlative. 

“We can’t all see alike in all things,” she went on, 
gently. “I don’t always agree with Mary; she’s a bit too 
much of a radical for me; yet there’s no finer girl on 
earth, and I often wish I had her courage. As far as the 
question of wages is concerned, you can do as you like— 
but wouldn’t the announcement in the papers of a raise in 
pay help you politically?” 

“I doubt it.” But he was impressed with the notion, 
and Ellen perceived the fact. 

“Well, if you do decide to increase the wages, let me 
know,” she concluded. “Mary, of course, must think 
you’re doing it of your own free will—but I promise to get 
her back home in two days thereafter.” She glanced 
around and perceived there were others in the room. 
“Good-by and good luck.” 


312 


THE RED-BLOOD 


She was as a benediction to McNicol; always she left 
him inexplicably strengthened and exalted. 

IV 

That particular forenoon was noteworthy, in that it 
brought him his first renewal of self-doubt. Till to-day, 
he had been projecting himself into this new sublime cru¬ 
sade heart and soul, with a certain fierce dispersal of en- 
ergy—yet all the time enveloped in the coma of conviction 
that he was somehow invulnerable, that his elevation to 
office was a mere formality. Now, however, for the next 
few hours, his easy complacency was nibbled into by a 
series of episodes, trifling in themselves, yet faintly dis¬ 
quieting as a whole. 

To begin with, the gentlemen of the press. More spe¬ 
cifically, the political reporters of the afternoon papers, 
the hostile Herald and the amicable Post. Two young 
chaps with alert eyes and rakish expressions, who would 
have died rather than admit that life, particularly life’s 
more devious phases, still held any secrets from them. 

They sought audience with McNicol each forenoon. 
Each forenoon he kept them waiting their regular turn. 
No favoritism, even to the envoys of publicity. Besides, 
he considered himself grievously slighted by the news¬ 
papers. Since the day following his nomination his name 
had not once bedighted a front page. That species of 
oblivion was to be anticipated from free-silver sheets like 
the Herald and the Sun, but he had a right to expect 
more honorable treatment from the Republican dailies— 
the Post and the Globe. It did not much assuage his an¬ 
noyance that the Democratic press was not featuring Jim 
Pettit to any degree. All the papers seemed engrossed 
solely with the national campaign; there was little space 
left for the lilliputian combat in their own back yard. 


THE SHORN LAMB 


313 

The two reporters at length progressed to his desk and 
produced soft-leaded pencils and folded copy paper. 

“Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you this morning?” 

“You can give us a good story.” 

“Good story?” 

“News. News. Something with guts in it.” 

McNicol was puzzled. “Well—the only thing I can tell 
you is that everything is goin’ fine, and all indications 
point to my election by the overwhelmin’ demand of my 
fellow citizens.” 

A further proof of the conspiracy of silence against 
him: the newspaper men did not even make a note of his 
confident pronouncement. Instead, they looked bored 
and discouraged. 

“But what’s happening? What issue are you banking 
on? What’s all the row about?” 

“Gentlemen,” he responded, acidly, “I’ve already told 
you I intend t’ make no campaign f’r office. The people 
do not have to be coaxed to vote for me.” 

At this, McNicol threw back his coat front and thereby 
exposed to view a row of cigars protruding from his vest 
pocket. The reporters displayed sudden interest. One 
of these fragrant Havanas he extracted and eyed thought¬ 
fully. 

“You might say that the McNicol-for-Mayor Club is 
holdin’ a large and enthusiastic meetin’ here this noon.” 

With that he bit off the end of the cigar and inserted 
it between his teeth, then fumbled in his pockets. 

“Ain’t either you boys got a match ’bout you, ay?” 

The press minions wilted back into their chairs with 
a renewal of pessimism regarding human generosity. 

“Oh yes,” recollected the apostle of political purity, be¬ 
tween exhalations of fragrant tobacco smoke. “Here’s 
something else for you.” This with an air of throwing 
scraps to a pair of hungry dogs. “McNicol & Company 


3i4 


THE RED-BLOOD 


have decided to raise the wages of their workin’ girls from 
three to four dollars a week, without any increase of 
hours.” 

The telephone rang. 

“McNicol there?” reverberated a masculine bellow. 

“Him speakin’.” 

“Say, this is Leo Toole, foreman at the Wolverine Stove 
Works. We was goin’ t’ have Jim Pettit out here for a 
noon meeting t’day, but he’s sick. The committee wants 
t’ know if you’d come instead. Make a little talk t’ the 
boys, see? Swing a few votes your way.” 

“I understand.” McNicol was not entirely pleased to 
act as a substitute for his rival, but he perceived his duty. 
“I am always glad to address my fellow citizens, Mr. 
Toole—but of course I don’t claim t’ be no speech maker.” 

“You ain’t?” The modest disclaimer seemed to give 
Mr. Toole pause. “Well, come along, anyhow. I guess 
you’ll be better ’n nothin’.” 

“What’s that!” 

“I said, you’ll be better ’n—no, forget that part! My 
mistake.” 

McNicol blew another cloud of cigar smoke into the re¬ 
porters’ faces and acquainted them with Mr. Toole’s in¬ 
vitation. 

“Guess that’s all,” he said, with a sense of having re¬ 
sponded amply to their needs. “Reckon that ’ll do for 
me, eh?” 

“You’re quite right,” said the Post representative, with 
peculiar emphasis. “It will do for you, so far’s I’m 
concerned.” 

Another vaguely disconcerting manifestation concerned 
the nature of the interviews from that moment on until 
he left his headquarters to go to the noon meeting. Mc¬ 
Nicol was sought out by some twelve persons, and of these 
all but two proved to be counterparts of Frankie—not a 


THE SHORN LAMB 


3*S 

little down-at-the-heel, but, like their prototype, fired with 
holy zeal for the Republican leader. Each one had some 
precinct in his pocket, so to speak. Each one was pro¬ 
moting a McNicol club, and, although eager to give his 
own services without pay, confessed himself distressingly 
unable to finance the club’s legitimate expenses. The sole 
divergence occurred in the estimate of the required sub¬ 
vention: the first organizer suggested seventy-five dol¬ 
lars, instead of Frankie’s fifty—and McNicol agreed; the 
second thought one hundred dollars might do. When the 
people’s choice balked on paying the third politician one 
hundred and twenty-five dollars and induced him to be 
content with an even hundred, the standard scale seemed 
to have been set; and thereafter, by odd coincidence, all 
the subsequent devotees tendered uniform budgets of one 
hundred dollars each. More curious still, Frankie him¬ 
self reappeared just at noon, and on the theory of over¬ 
looked items, reluctantly sued for a second fifty dollars. 

The noon rally, too, left a saline residue in his con¬ 
sciousness. Not that the audience was meager: five hun¬ 
dred smeary-faced stove workers were herded together 
into an inclosed yard. Not that Mr. Leo Toole failed to 
introduce him with a eulogy that was honest, if rough. 
Not that there were lacking some indications of a high 
degree of success: the Rev. Ronald Beemish—his Metho¬ 
dist minister, also president of the McNicol-for-Mayor 
Club—who accompanied him and sat with him on the 
platform, assured McNicol he had scored a great triumph. 

The great difficulty seemed to be that he was, as he had 
warned Mr. Toole, no speech maker. He had had no 
time to write out a suitable oration. Even so, he was 
genuinely perplexed and even grieved by the mulish 
apathy of his audience, the occasional spindrift of mock¬ 
ing laughter blown off the crowd’s surface into his face. 

For he had not done so badly, he felt, everything con- 


THE RED-BLOOD 


316 

sidered. Certainly he had been guilty of no high-flown 
airs. No one, in fact, could possibly have been more 
charitable toward the sooty rabble. Yes, he had gone 
so far as to assure these brutalized creatures that they 
were as good as he, to encourage them to take an interest 
in politics. He had even called them, “fellow citizens’’ 
—not once, but a dozen times. In short, from first to 
last, he had done his best to put them at their ease. 

v 

He felt decidedly more cheerful when he and the 
Reverend Beemish returned to headquarters and he was 
acclaimed rapturously by the McNicol-for-Mayor Club. 

“Three cheers for our next mayor!” exhorted Reverend 
Beemish. 

The club scrambled to its feet and articulated its death¬ 
less fealty. Several members gave the Chautauqua 
salute. 

Lest it be feared that in sanctioning this organization, 
McNicol had violated his pledge to conduct no active cam¬ 
paign, it should be stated at once that the McNicol-for- 
Mayor Club had formed itself, quite spontaneously and 
without the help or knowledge of its patron saint. He 
was not even a member. Reverend Beemish it was who 
had conceived the brilliant idea. The occasion seemed 
ripe for a few of the best citizens of the city to take an 
active part in municipal government; to unite themselves 
into one compact phalanx to defeat the corrupt element 
and to carry the real champion of the people into office 
triumphantly. 

He epitomized the club in addressing its members at 
this, the first meeting, in the following apt phrase: 

“A mighty gathering together of the Forces of Right¬ 
eousness.” 


THE SHORN LAMB 


3 i 7 


In describing the organization as “mighty” he was 
measuring its intensity, not its bulk. For thus far, the 
Club had but ten members, selected for the most part by 
the Reverend Beemish. There were two other divines— 
one Baptist, one Congregational—just to indicate to the 
world that the organization was not narrow-minded. Two 
physicians, also, and two G. A. R. veterans—to give 
proper accent to the candidate’s war record. A high-school 
teacher, a retired insurance man—and Artemas Bigelow. 

McNicol, in answer to unanimous insistence, delivered 
a brief speech, in which he set forth the purity of his 
own motives, as well as those of his hearers, and ventured 
to predict a brighter future for municipal affairs. The 
club listened much more respectfully than had the stove 
workers. 

At the end, he intimated that inasmuch as he was not 
a member of the organization, it would be more delicate 
for him to retire from the assemblage at this point and 
leave it to its own deliberations. This suggestion pre¬ 
cipitated a lively dispute. There were cries of, “No, 
no!”; and it was decided after fifteen minutes that he 
should remain during the first meeting, at least. 

The members all agreed that his election was assured; 
the talk was most informal and everybody was having a 
thoroughly pleasant time, when Artemas Bigelow, who 
had thus far taken no part in the symposium, interjected 
an uncivil inquiry: 

“But what are we actually going to do?” 

A slight resentment emanated from the club, and they 
all fidgeted uncertainly a moment. Then one of the doc¬ 
tors spoke up: “Not much necessity of doing anything, 
is there, with the outcome so certain?” 

“Then,” demanded Bigelow, “what’s the function of 

this organization?” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


318 

There was adding insult to injury, obviously. But the 
Reverend Beemish could take punishment manfully. 

“There’s something in what our friend says. We must 
be doers, not mere talkers. We must swell our chieftain’s 
victory into a tidal wave of godliness.” 

Bigelow was not satisfied. “As a matter of fact, we 
aren’t sure of electing McNicol. Nothing is certain in 
politics. We’ve got to work day and night—take no 
chances.” 

The McNicol-for-Mayor Club was distressed, and 
showed it. The candidate himself glowered unamiably at 
his attorney. 

“Well, what’s your program?” he demanded. 

“Organization. Publicity. Pettit is doing a lot of 
quiet, effective hustling—getting all the machine precincts 
lined up. The intelligent vote is our hope, but it’s asleep. 
We’ve got to wake it up.” 

President Beemish coughed deprecatingly. “While I 
don’t wholly agree with Mr. Bigelow, I think we ought to 
plan something. The only question is—just what?” 

It was a point not a soul had thought about. None 
of them, in fact, had ever essayed politics before. Prac¬ 
tical expedients somehow refused to descend from the 
heavens. 

How did one go about it to elect a mayor, anyway? 

The school teacher had an inspiration: 

“Why can’t we distribute those pamphlets?” He in¬ 
dicated the stacks of literature piled everywhere about the 
room. “I mean—actually stand on the street corners and 
hand ’em out. Or leave them on the doorsteps through¬ 
out the city.” 

They fell upon the suggestion with fervor. The very 
thing—a direct appeal to the voters. But when Bigelow 
took out his pencil and began to make a schedule of pre¬ 
cisely what hours each member could give to the work, 


THE SHORN LAMB 


3 i 9 


unforeseen complications developed. For everyone pro¬ 
fessed himself a busy man, especially at this time; willing 
to snatch time to attend meetings, eager to do everything 
he could, of course; but not able to state definitely just 
what period of the day he could devote to peddling cam¬ 
paign booklets. 

Bigelow put his pencil back with a sardonic smile. 

Reverend Beemish made a sensible suggestion: 

“I shouldn’t be surprised if we were all just a little 
unprepared, as yet; but, now that we have met together 
and glimpsed our problems, I’m sure we shall all go home 
and think seriously about their solution, with God’s gra¬ 
cious help. Suppose we adjourn now, to meet again on 
Friday.” 

The club dispersed with avidity. It was after half 
past one, anyway, and most of the zealots had not lunched 
as yet. 

“Coming, Welly?” inquired that trouble maker, Arte- 
mas Bigelow. 

McNicol shook his head. He was low spirited enough 
already, without listening to the attorney’s skeptical 
thrusts another hour or two. 

Still further affliction impended, nevertheless. The 
telephone rang at that instant, and he was acquainted 
with the depressing news that John had just suffered a 
severe stroke. 

When he reached home, twenty minutes later, the worst 
was over. He found his son in an armchair in his bed¬ 
room, still partly unconscious, his head collapsed forward 
on his knees, his right index finger meticulously tracing 
imaginary figure-eights around his shoe tops, with a 
dogged and terrible incessancy—as if that ritual alone had 
power to deliver him from the demon-ridden blackness 
of imbecility. 


320 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing that 
the dangerous phase of the stroke had passed. 

It was Beatrice, her piquant mouth and nose still quiv¬ 
ering with anger, her eyes still sparkling with the tears 
of humiliation, who took him into another room and har¬ 
rowed him with a recital of what had happened. 

“Look!” she cried, and pointed through a window to 
the half dozen loiterers still grouped on the sidewalk be¬ 
fore the Mausoleum in postures of elaborate unconcern. 

“What—” Uncomprehending, he saw one of the strag¬ 
glers point down to the grass alongside the stone walk. 

“That’s where he had his fit,” she burst out. “Right 
in front of the house! With fifty people fighting each 
other for a look at him.” 

He was appalled. Always heretofore John had had the 
grace to be stricken while within the privacy of his home. 
This present performance in public was what they had all 
been dreading for years. 

“I was the only one here,” Bee sobbed, hysterically. 
“I had to go out there all alone and get them to carry 
John in. Oh, it was terrible! The beasts! They all 
stared so, just as if it were a mad dog; and some of them 
were making fun of John. And, oh—he looked so 
ghastly, so vile!” She turned upon him passionately. “I 
told you this would happen some day. I warned you to 
get rid of him. And now you’ve simply got to!” 

“Get rid of him?” he repeated dazedly. “How can I?” 

“I don’t care how! Send him away somewhere—him 
and his filthy disease together!” 

She clinched the matter by voicing a salient aspect that 
had the instant before suggested itself to McNicol with 
sickening cogency. 

“What chance d’you think you’ll have of being elected 
mayor, if people find out your son has fits all over the 
street?” 


THE SHORN LAMB 


321 


VI 

A fortnight later, on the evening of October first, Mc- 
Nicol entered his son’s bedroom briskly, with a factitious 
air of breezy cheerfulness. 

“All packed?” he queried. 

John, a little pale from his two weeks’ confinement, 
nodded morosely toward his closed suitcase. 

“I want to know where we’re going?” He ceased his 
monotonous rocking to and fro in the armchair. 

“I told you this morning—to Chicago.” 

“Yes, but why am I being sent off this way?” And he 
repeated the unanswerable question, “What have I done?” 

“You haven’t done anything,” reassured his father. 
“Only you ain’t very well, see? You’re goin’ to a—a sort 
of hospital where you’ll get better.” 

John shook his head stubbornly. “What’s wrong with 
me, anyway? I feel all right.” 

That was one of the distressing features of the case. 
He was perfectly sane and normal ninety per cent of the 
time. Naturally, he was not aware of his occasional 
“queerness”; and his more serious strokes seemed to leave 
not the slightest impress on his consciousness. 

McNicol, not being wholly inhumane, sighed deeply, 
but silently. The whole episode, in truth, had been a 
bitter Calvary for him. His initial plan had been to send 
John to his mother’s house in Cartwright. There his son 
could have as many fits as he chose, and it would concern 
no one. But wouldn’t it? He had no small pride con¬ 
cerning his reputation in his home village. Then, too, 
the thought of Cartwright somehow brought back the 
poignant boyhood memory of his own wretched captivity 
on the Grizard farm. That sufficed to erase his mother’s 
house as a possible refuge and to heighten his repugnance 
almost to the point of giving up the entire project. Yet 


322 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Beatrice had remained insistent; and she was quite right 
in a way, he felt. John would really be much better off 
in some institution where he could receive scientific care 
—where, moreover, his condition might actually improve. 
Bee it was who found out about the “home” for just such 
cases in a suburb of Chicago, and thereby dissevered the 
knotty problem. 

There was a knock on the door, and a middle-aged, be¬ 
spectacled man with a reddish beard entered the room. 

“Well—all ready, I see,” he observed, employing the 
same soothingly optimistic inflection that McNicol him¬ 
self had affected. The superintendent of the “home,” 
this, who had come to escort the new patient back with 
him that night. 

“Yes, sir—every bit,” answered McNicol, participating 
in the conspiracy of jollity. 

John’s eyes searched his prospective keeper’s face, first 
with mere uneasiness, then with acute apprehension. 
Suddenly he sprang up. 

“I won’t go with him!” he cried, with anguish. “He’ll 
mistreat me; he’ll-” 

The superintendent was used to such unreasonable out¬ 
bursts. “There, there, you’re all right, John.” 

There was an odd contortion to the man’s mouth, Mc¬ 
Nicol thought; and all at once he was visited by the ab¬ 
surd conviction that something in the ofAcial’s demeanor 
resembled Aleck Grizard’s. Outlandish! The superin¬ 
tendent was a physician of good repute, he knew; and the 
“home” a well-managed and prosperous institution. 

“Don’t be silly!” he told his son. “I’m goin’ along 
with you, ain’t I? An’ if you don’t like the place, I prom¬ 
ise you you don’t have to stay.” 

John’s answer was a look of such appealing gratitude 
that McNicol sensed a sudden piercing twinge of com¬ 
punction. Perhaps, had the mood lasted, he might even 



THE SHORN LAMB 


323 

now have sent the superintendent back to Chicago empty- 
handed. 

But Beatrice entered the room, an expression of vir¬ 
tuous resignation on her handsome countenance, as if to 
say, “I’m more upset about poor John than anyone else, 
but I’ve done my duty.” She considered, indeed, that she 
was practically saving the family’s fortunes these days. 
Had she not postponed her return to school, most un¬ 
selfishly, just to see that her brother’s case was properly 
disposed of? 

“Mr. Bigelow’s here,” she announced. “Wants to 
know if he can see you.” 


VII 

Artemas he discovered in a high degree of agitation, 
striding back and forth in the library. 

“What’s up?” 

“Despatches from the firing line, O Satrap!” The at¬ 
torney’s broad face relaxed somewhat into one of his pro¬ 
voking smiles. 

McNicol instantly knew that Bigelow’s tidings con¬ 
cerned the political situation—and further, that the news, 
whatever it was, would be bad. That was Bigelow all 
over: not once had he encouraged his client; everybody 
else continued to assure McNicol of his triumphant elec¬ 
tion, but not Bigelow. Always pessimism, always the 
possibility of defeat. 

To record truly, the candidate himself was not quite 
so buoyant as he had been a fortnight ago. Not that his 
friend’s dour misgivings had appreciably shaken him. 
Not that there was any tangible trouble of any sort. The 
McNicol-for-Mayor Club continued to meet with ever- 
increasing emotional fervor, to convey its splendid loyalty 
and its messages of eloquent assurance to the great 


324 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Chieftain. Still, the club wasn’t doing anything, as Bige¬ 
low lost no opportunity of pointing out. And the coun¬ 
terparts of Frankie continued to inundate the people’s 
galliard with their proffers of generous, yet expensive, 
assistance. By now, there were at least forty precincts 
where he could count on unanimous support. 

His sense of ineptitude had continued to gather force, 
nevertheless. Partly because of his worry about John, 
undoubtedly, but principally as the result of more relevant 
causes. Those noon meetings, for example—he had ad¬ 
dressed three more of them; and though in each instance 
he had had time to prepare his remarks, there was no re¬ 
sisting the conclusion he had not been a success. The 
attitude of the newspapers, too—they were giving him 
less space than ever; the Democratic organs predicted 
his defeat with disquieting frequency; more surprising, 
the Post and the Globe, his natural allies, which had been 
merely apathetic before, now treated him quizzically, with 
a faint tinge of ridicule. He could not understand it—in 
fact, that was his constant sensation: he could understand 
almost nothing of what was transpiring all about him. 
Now, more than ever, he felt as if he were playing blind 
man’s buff—and his were the eyes that were inextricably 
bandaged. 

Within the last three days, moreover, there had come 
a more specific source of misgiving. The morning Globe 
had announced a “straw vote”—that is, each day its rep¬ 
resentatives were to go to a different ward of the city and 
there circulate condensed ballots among a certain number 
of its electors. The Bryan papers scoffed at this pro¬ 
cedure, and predicted that the vote would be doctored; 
and though the Globe guaranteed that the count would be 
made and published with strict honesty, it was fairly cer¬ 
tain that the various Republican candidates would not re¬ 
ceive the worst of the deal. 


THE SHORN LAMB 


325 


The first two days’ vote, taken respectively in the first 
and second wards—admittedly “silk stocking” districts— 
had been printed as follows: 

President Governor Mayor 

McKinley, 223 Pingree, 239 McNicol, 187 

Bryan, 126 Sligh, no Pettit, 162 

It was of course not particularly pleasing to ascertain 
that he was running a full 16 per cent behind the presi¬ 
dential candidate; but, as the Reverend Beemish pointed 
out, Jim Pettit resided in the first ward and had repre¬ 
sented it as alderman for many years; and it was fair to 
assume he would develop unusual strength there. 

This morning had come the report from the third ward, 
notoriously unregenerate in its ways: 


President 

To-day Total 
McKinley, 61 284 

Bryan, 109 235 


Governor 

To-day Total 
Pingree, 58 297 

Sligh, 112 222 


Mayor 

To-day Total 

McNicol, 54 241 

Pettit, 116 278 


McNicol was seriously disturbed by now, not because 
he had anticipated a majority from the Democratic third 
ward; but because he could see no reason for falling be¬ 
hind McKinley and Pingree. He was now the only Re¬ 
publican candidate who was trailing his rival on the three 
days’ showing. And where, oh, where was Frankie, who 
had sworn to deliver every vote in the first of the third? 

“Guess the Globe must have skipped that one,” he re¬ 
flected, ruefully. 

So disgusted was he that he conveyed a subterranean 
message to Joe Cottrell. 

“He says not t’ worry about no straw vote,” reassured 
the envoy, upon his return. “You’re goin’ t’ win by a 
landslide.” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


326 

Reverend Beemish also advised him to be of good cheer. 
The fourth ward, normally Republican, was also the min¬ 
ister’s place of residence; he had done a great deal of 
work among his neighbors, he said; and he predicted a 
mighty avalanche of Forces of Righteousness. 

“You’ll get three votes out of four,” he affirmed, with¬ 
out hesitation. 

And McNicol took heart again and waited eagerly. 

Artemas Bigelow, realizing this expectancy, had just 
telephoned the Globe office. 

“Here’s the fourth ward for you,” he cried, and without 
comment handed his friend a sheet of paper inscribed 
with pencil notations: 

President Governor Mayor 

To-day Total To-day Total To-day Total 

McKinley, 103 387 Pingree, 107 404 McNicol, 85 326 

Bryan, 70 305 Sligh, 66 288 Pettit, 88 366 

McNicol could not comprehend the figures for a mo¬ 
ment—then: 

“Damn it!” 

“Exactly,” said Artemas Bigelow. 

“You’ve went an’ made some mistake.” 

“No mistake, I fear. I repeated it back to the city 
editor.” 

The anointed one blinked. “But what’s it mean?” 

“It means,” interpreted the prophet of pessimism— 
“it means right now you’re skunked.” 

The gold crown over one of McNicol’s bicuspids be¬ 
came abruptly visible. “But Joe Cottrell says-” 

“Listen,” interrupted Bigelow. “You may distrust my 
political opinions, but you surely must believe my cold 
facts. I’ve just come from a saloon on Congress Street, 
not three blocks from here. Every saloon is a political 



THE SHORN LAMB 


327 

headquarters these days; that’s why I stopped in at this 

one—to get a straight line on what’s actually going on. 

Let me tell you what I saw. A gang of fifteen or twenty 

men bunched together at one end of the bar. Drinking 

beer, of course—as fast as the barkeep could hand it out. 

One fellow was buying the booze for the crowd. ‘Come 

on, boys,’ he kept yelling. ‘Let’s have another on Mc- 

Nicol.’ And once he said: ‘You bovs understand none of 

* 

this money ain’t goin’t’ be spent in no saloon.’ I thought 
they’d all die laughing at that; and finally one lad 
shouted: ‘T’ hell with McNicol! Three cheers f’r Jimmy 
Pettit!’ And they all cut loose.” 

m/ 

The nominee applied a handkerchief to his glistening 
forehead and seemed about to articulate. 

But Bigelow was merciless. “After a while I bought 
a couple of drinks for the other barkeep and asked him 
what it was all about. He said the boy with the money 
had got it from you, but was spending it to make votes 
for Pettit. The barkeep thought it was pretty funny him¬ 
self. I said, ‘But somebody told me Joe Cottrell was out 
for McNicol.’ ‘That’s just what that blankety blank 
McNicol thinks,’ the barkeep said, and had another good 
laugh. ‘Cottrell’s double-crossed him, that’s what.’ Then 
just as I was leaving I asked him who was going to be 
elected. ‘Pettit, by ten thousand. That Christer, Mc¬ 
Nicol, ain’t got no more chance than’— Well, I guess I 
won’t repeat his exact words.” 

The color mounted the Republican candidate’s pendu¬ 
lous cheeks. “By God!” he muttered. 

“As things stand now, you’re licked,” said the attorney, 
philosophically. “They’ve got you trimmed forty ways, 
and they’re splitting their sides because you’re such an 
easy mark.” 

“I’ll show them who’s an easy mark!” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


328 

Bigelow’s accents were deliberate. “Well, how will you 
show them? What are you going to do about it, anyhow?” 

McNicoPs fury seemed suddenly punctured and he 
found himself staring in impotent bewilderment. 

“Just one thing possible.” The lawyer answered his 
own question with convincing decisiveness. “Get some 
one who knows the ropes to help you. We’re all babes 
in the wood. We’re amateurs. Ninnies! Rag chewers! 
And you’re the shorn lamb, picked for the sacrificial knife. 
We’ve blundered long enough. Let’s get hold of a pro¬ 
fessional! Some chap who’s wise to the game.” 

The shorn lamb shook his head in helpless exasperation. 
“I don’t know nobody-” 

Bigelow caught his friend’s arm. “Well, I think I’ve 
got the right man lined up,” he disclosed, not without 
pride in his astuteness. “Put on your hat and coat and 
come down to my office. I’ll phone him to be there.” 

While McNicol was in the act of pulling on his fall 
overcoat, he espied the superintendent of the Chicago 
“home” standing in the hallway, and at the sight he sud¬ 
denly recalled his promise to his afflicted son to accom¬ 
pany him to the institution. Recalled also that unfor- 
getable look of pathetic trustfulness on John’s face. 

Artemas Bigelow reappeared from the telephone booth. 
“I got him! He’ll be there in half an hour.” 

For another instant McNicol was torn between prac¬ 
tical necessity and mere sentiment. Then he approached 
the red-bearded superintendent briskly. 

“I ain’t a-goin’ with you,” he said. “Tell John impor¬ 
tant business—I’ll be over to see him in a few days. And 
I’ll try to be at the station when the train leaves.” 

Outside in the crisp autumn night, he turned to his 
companion. 

“Who is this fellow you got in mind?” 



THE SHORN LAMB 


329 

The marplot smiled contentedly. “His name is Gayly 
O’Brien.” 

Oddly reassuring, somehow, in spite of its Irish sound. 
“After all”—he stifled a vague whisper of remorse— 
“they wa’n’t no reason for me goin’ to Chicago. John ’ll 
be better off without me.” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 
I 

* f, \ 7 ES,” confirmed Mr. Gayly O’Brien at once, “Cot- 
* trell’s sold you out, all right. I’ve known that for 
three weeks.” 

A dolichocephalic Irishman, this nervous perspicacious 
young man: thin faced, narrow headed, with a beaklike 
nose and a thin-lipped, faded mouth. Almost the fanati¬ 
cal, doctrinaire type of Irishman, he was saved from this 
by a pair of extremely merry blue eyes, an unexpectedly 
rugged neck, solid shoulders and torso—most of all, by 
his quiet yet keen-witted amiability. 

Artemas Bigelow was not too offensive in his vindica¬ 
tion. “You see?” 

McNicol nodded sourly. He had been not unfavorably 
impressed with O’Brien; and though some obstinate racial 
prejudice prevented him from trusting any Irishman com¬ 
pletely, he had already learned enough of his prospective 
manager’s past career to respect his political sagacity. 
Gayly O’Brien was an ex-newspaper man; he had worked 
for both the Herald and the Globe in his time. Thence 
he had graduated naturally into politics; and for the last 
two years he had served as a clerk in the city assessors’ 
office. Not a particularly remarkable record, perhaps, yet 
he spoke of things political with confident authority. 

“Joe Cottrell’s always played ball with the Vote Swap¬ 
per’s League,” he expanded. “Nominally, he’s a Repub- 

330 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


33 i 

lican; but he swings his support to whichever side he 
happens to be thickest with. He and Jim Pettit have 
teamed it together for years—under cover, of course. 
Whereas you’re an outsider, a dude; your ideas wouldn’t 
be apt to jibe with his.” 

“And just as well pleased I am not to have his support,” 
McNicol asserted. “Wouldn’t want to be elected that 
way. Now I can go into office absolutely free handed.” 

O’Brien smiled. “Of course, Cottrell figures he’s play¬ 
ing both sides in this instance. If you should happen to 
be elected, he’ll come to you and claim all the credit.” 

“The damn’ scoundrel! He’ll get what’s cornin’ to him 
—you jus’ watch.” 

Bigelow yanked his client back to unpleasant actuali¬ 
ties. “Better wait till you’re elected.” 

Nettled, McNicol pivoted toward the assessors’ clerk. 

“Well,” he demanded, point blank, “how ’bout it?” 

“I think—” said O’Brien, without bravado. “Well, I 
think I can still put you across.” 

Accustomed as he was to the high emotional voltage of 
the McNicol-for-Mayor Club, to say nothing of the vocif¬ 
erous promises of the phalanx of Frankies, the candidate 
found a subtly tonic quality in this impersonal, almost 
hesitating, statement. His recent disillusions, however, 
had made him slightly cautious. 

“You think you can, ay? Well, now, have you got any 
plans?” 

“I’ll tell you, in a general way. At the beginning of the 
campaign, you had everything in your favor. For ex¬ 
ample, McKinley and Pingree: all you had to do was 
coast downhill on the same sled with them. If I had been 
your manager from the start, there’d be no doubt about 
your election, I think. Now, the only question is—have 
we enough time left to undo the mistakes that have been 
made?” 


332 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“I know,” said McNicol, with a spacious gesture. 
“But just what would you do if I put you in charge?” 

The young man continued evasive. “I’d calk up the 
leaks, first of all—eliminate the errors. Then I’d arrange 
the right publicity. In brief, I’d see that the public got 
to know you. Thirdly, I’d stir up a bit of excitement— 
get the voters interested in the campaign.” 

“Oh, that’s all very fine, but anybody could tell me that 
much. What I want you to show me is exactly-” 

“Wait a minute, Mac,” cut in Bigelow. “It’s hardly 
reasonable to expect Mr. O’Brien to give you the benefit 
of his experience for nothing. You can’t ask him to turn 
over a lot of valuable ideas until he knows whether or not 
you’re going to sign a contract with him.” 

O’Brien gave a deprecating and barely perceptible nod. 

“All right,” agreed McNicol, unwillingly. “How much 
pay d’ you want?” 

The prompt answer staggered him. 

“Twenty-five hundred dollars, win or lose. And if I 
am successful, a two-year contract to serve as your politi¬ 
cal adviser, at five thousand a year.” 

“It’s an outrage,” he wanted to say; but what he 
actually replied was: “Too much! I can’t afford it.” 

Scoffed Bigelow, “Of course you can!” 

“My figures may seem high at first.” Gayly O’Brien 
could not quite keep the eagerness out of his voice; in 
truth, the project meant alluring opportunity for rapid 
success to him. “But I believe I can save you at least 
that much on your campaign expenses. Let’s see—you 
gave Cottrell ten thousand dollars, and you must have 
handed out another five to a lot of ward heelers, haven’t 
you?” 

“I don’t know.” It lacerated the nominee that the pro¬ 
portions of his folly should be known so accurately. 

“Money thrown away—most of it. Well, if I’m your 




THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


333 


manager there’ll be no more touches. That’s probably 
five thousand saved right there. I can lop another five 
from your printing and advertising bills. In other words, 
there’ll be no more leg-pulling.” 

The phrase was not a mollifying one. 

“No, sir; you’re askin’ too much,” McNicol insisted. 
“I might be willin’ to give you a thousand for the cam¬ 
paign. How do I know you’re any good? If I’m elected 
—well, I’ll do the right thing. But not five thousand a 
year! Ain’t twenty men in Detroit get that much.” 

O’Brien, in command of himself by now, shrugged his 
shoulders regretfully, as if it gave him personal anguish 
that the next mayor must be a Democrat. 

But Bigelow again intervened, this time unctuously: 
“That’s all right, boys. Let’s not worry about a few 
hundred dollars difference.” He threw O’Brien a covertly 
reassuring glance. “Let’s think about it overnight and 
meet for lunch to-morrow noon. Gayly can get his ideas 
in shape and we’ll get going, eh?” He rose to his feet 
and slapped his friend on the back. “I feel it in my bones 
—we’ll do the trick, sure!” 

McNicol himself felt greatly exhilarated. By the time 
he reached his house he had completely rebounded from 
his abysmal despair of two hours ago. 

“Might even give O’Brien fifteen hundred,” he cajoled 
his instinctive frugality. 

Mary, who had returned home several days before, 
confronted him in the hallway. “Was John all right at 
the station?” 

Slowly, reluctantly, he emerged from the tissue of mag¬ 
nificent dreams. “By Jiminy! I didn’t go!” 

“Oh, I’m awfully sorry!” she deplored. “We had a 
hard time persuading him to leave the house at all. 
He cried—oh, it was tragic! The only way we could get 




334 


THE RED-BLOOD 


him to go was by promising him you were waiting at the 

station. That man who was with him-” 

“I guess John ’ll be all right,” he tried to exculpate his 
forgetfulness. 

A tear ran down Mary’s cheek. “The poor boy!” she 
said. 


ii 

The next day was Friday, yet Gayly O’Brien straight¬ 
way ordered rare roast beef for his luncheon. 

McNicol was surprised and delighted. A Belfast Irish¬ 
man. 

“I took you for a damn’ Papist,” he apologized. 

Gayly was not much amused. “I am one—but I’m 
afraid not a very good one. What is technically known 
as a fair-weather Catholic. Unfortunately, I don’t like 
fish, and I get eggs for breakfast, so what else is there 
for me to do except disobey Mother Church?” 

His principal interest in religious and racial differences 
related to the manner in which they might affect votes. 
Throughout the meal he discoursed fluently about consid¬ 
erations that McNicol and Bigelow had never dreamed of. 

“Catholics don’t ordinarily hang together at the polls, 
any more than Protestants do; any priest—except pos¬ 
sibly one or two in the Polish district—who tries to tell 
his flock how to vote gets the merry ha-ha,” he asserted, 
surprisingly. “But when it comes to nationalities, you 
have another situation. Here in Detroit, for example, 
there are at least three powerful and cohesive minorities: 
the Irish, the German, and the Polish. The rest of the 
city usually splits up on any candidate, with the result 
that when these minorities unite, as they’re apt to do, they 
carry the balance of power. And they’re influenced by 
factors that would never occur to a person like either of 
you. A candidate’s name, for instance. Take your case: 




THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


335 


the average Irishman would be prejudiced against you the 
minute he knew your first name was Wellington. Eng¬ 
lish, see? Whereas the English and Canadian vote 
wouldn’t probably think anything about the name, either 
for or against. After this, you’re going to be known as 
W. Dennison McNicol, or Dennis, for short. Better yet 
—Dinny. McNicol’s all right—it might be Irish.” 

He was forever referring to the mass of his own na¬ 
tionality as “shanty Irish” with an unconcealed contempt 
that struck his listeners with wonderment. 

McNicol, especially, absorbed more practical politics in 
an hour than in all the years that lay behind him. During 
the earlier part of the talk he had attempted to interject 
his own lofty formulas from time to time, but soon he fell 
almost silent. 

For O’Brien seemed frankly awestruck by his pupil’s 
naivete. “Where’d you get that idea?” he would exclaim. 
Or, “Who told you that?” And when the candidate re¬ 
ferred once to the McNicol-for-Mayor Club, he actually 
laughed. “I suppose they’re harmless enough,” he 
granted, “though they’re always likely to bust loose with 
some wild idea that ’ll lose you a few thousand votes. 
Mind you, they mean well; but they think of politics as 
a sort of prayer meeting, instead of just a game not to be 
taken too seriously. Besides, they’re all good intention 
and nothing else. They’re never willing to peel off their 
coats and do the required drudgery. They can’t under¬ 
stand the necessity of committee work. To them politics 
means a chance to get into the limelight.” He shook his 
narrow head. “But I guess we can let them have their 
fun and not hurt their feelings much.” 

Artemas Bigelow had to go early. “I’ll leave you two 
together,” he said. “The idealist and the young cynic.” 

“But I’m not a cynic,” O’Brien protested, good- 
naturedly. “This is a campaign , and in any campaign 


THE RED-BLOOD 


336 

one takes things as one finds them. Mr. McNicol sugar- 
coats the pills out at his plant, doesn’t he? Well, that’s 
all I want him to do with his political ideas. Once we’ve 
elected him, he can begin to accomplish really valuable 
things for the city—but not now! He’s got to play ac¬ 
cording to the regulations, or take his beatings. And at 
that, I mean he sha’n’t be asked to spend a cent for illegiti¬ 
mate purposes.” When the attorney had gone, he pulled 
a notebook from his vest pocket. “I’m ready to give you 
some of my ideas now, Mr. Mayor.” 

McNicol had an instant’s uneasiness. What was to be 
the agreement about his lieutenant’s salary? Not a word 
had been said about the matter thus far; yet O’Brien was 
assuming a satisfactory compact. 

“Fire away,” he said. After all, it was O’Brien’s risk, 
not his. 

“You remember my telling you last night the first thing 
was to calk up the leaks? Well, here goes, and please 
don’t be offended by anything I say. Let’s see: I’ve 
already spoken to you about not handing out any more 
money to heelers. And about the McNicol-for-Mayor 
Club. Did I say anything about your speeches?” 

“No.” 

“Those noonday meetings—you’re losing hundreds of 
votes by not handing out the right talk. I think after this 
you’d better let me write your speeches for you.” 

McNicol gulped. 

“The next thing is to get the right publicity. We’ve 
got to land you on the front page.” 

“Now you’re talkin’! What’s the matter with the news¬ 
papers, anyhow?” 

“Well, in the first place, you’ve antagonized the report¬ 
ers. None of them likes you.” And Gayly O’Brien 
glanced meaningly at his employer’s Havana. 

McNicol had an idea. “Smoke a cigar?” 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


337 


“Thanks, I believe I will. And I’m sure the reporters 
can be won over if you treat them like human beings. 
But secondly, you never give them anything to write 
about, no good stories—nothing they can play up. That’s 
where I come in. It’s my job to build up a picturesque 
personality, let people know all the interesting facts about 
you. For example, I want some group pictures of you 
and your family. ‘The Republican candidate and his chil¬ 
dren’—see?” 

It occurred to McNicol that such a photograph could 
hardly be supplied. 

“By the way, didn’t I use to know your son Arthur?” 
pursued his henchman, innocently. “What’s become of 
him?” 

“He—he’s away at present.” 

“Oh!” O’Brien’s sensitive antennae instantly detected 
he was on a painful topic. “Nice kid, I always thought.” 

“You did, ay?” McNicol lost his temper. “Well, 
neither of my sons is to be mentioned in the newspapers, 
understand? Course, there’s my daughter Bee. I could 
give you her picture.” 

“That ’ll do nicely.” O’Brien scrambled aboard safer 
topics. “Well, the third thing we must do is connected 
with the second. To secure the requisite publicity, we 
must not only build up your personality, but we must also 
give the papers some actual news. We must stir up some 
excitement—incidentally, wake people up; most of them 
hardly know there’s a mayoral election coming. Now 
what folks are really interested in, as every newspaper 
man knows, is a good scrap. In other words, we must 
find some big issue and start a fight.” 

McNicol lighted a fresh cigar, and this time did not 
neglect to push a duplicate across the table. “How about 
municipal purity for an issue?” he set forth, quite pleased 
with his quick receptivity. 



THE RED-BLOOD 


338 

“No, no!” The acceptance of the second cigar did not 
insure respectful acquiescence, evidently. “People don’t 
want abstractions; they want something concrete. We 
must attack something or somebody—and now that I 
think of it, there’s one institution that can always be 
abused to political advantage. Namely, the street-car 
company.” 

“But I got no grudge against them!” 

Gayly did not hear. His eyes were bright with exqui¬ 
site joy. “The very thing!” he whispered, raptly. 

The sight of a newspaper on an adjacent table sud¬ 
denly brought home a more exigent emergency to Mc- 
Nicol. “Say!” he exclaimed. “What we goin’ to do ’bout 
that straw vote in the Globe?” 

Young Mr. O’Brien awoke from his trance, glanced at 
his watch and sprang up from the table. “Don’t worry 
about that. I know the reporter who’s making the tally. 
What’s more, I’m going out with him this afternoon to 
the Fifth Ward. As a matter of actual fact”—he winked 
at McNicol solemnly—“I have kindly volunteered to help 
him record the verdict of the people from now on.” 

hi 

The final tabulation of the Globe’s straw vote, some two 
weeks later, revealed these gratifying figures: 

President Governor Mayor 

McKinley, 1389 Pingree, 1631 McNicol, 1347 

Bryan, 1174 Sligh, 932 Pettit, 1216 

“I didn’t want to make your vote too big,” explained 
Gayly O’Brien, deferentially. “Get Pettit and Cottrell 
so scared they’d work their heads off. As it stands, they 
aren’t likely to pay so much attention.” 

Evidence was already accumulating, however, to indicate 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


339 


that the Forces of Evil were beginning to be disturbed. 
As one instance, this morning’s hostile Sun flaunted a 
ludicrous cartoon of McNicol on its front page captioned, 
“The Canadian Don Quixote,” and depicting him with 
bilious eyes and a grossly libelous paunch astride a bony, 
discouraged mare. 

The candidate was both wroth and perturbed by this 
direct thrust at his foreign birth. 

“By Golly! I’ll sue them for that! I’ll make ’em pay 
dear!” 

“Make ’em pay dear? Why, you ought to be willing 
to give them five hundred dollars for that cartoon!” 
O’Brien, perplexingly enough, seemed delighted. “The 
more the Sun attacks you, the better.” 

“But how ’bout the Irish vote?” 

“That’s all right. Morning papers don’t circulate much 
among the Irish. On the other hand, they do reach the 
Canadians—see? Our friends, the enemy, have stubbed 
their toes. And, anyway, it’s much better to be attacked 
than ignored—see? Doesn’t matter what the papers say 
about you, so long as they say something!” 

But the People’s Choice sulked. He found himself in 
almost constant disagreement with his campaign manager, 
these days. Take this very question of newspaper pub¬ 
licity: at first, he had been wholly captivated by the lauda¬ 
tory articles that commenced appearing in the Republican 
press the day following O’Brien’s assumption of com¬ 
mand. Then an unforeseen change occurred within him: 
his starved vanity became surfeited and an unsuspected 
British reserve began to protest against the exploitation 
of every intimate detail of his life. 

“What difference does it make if my wife does darn my 
socks?” he had exploded after one particularly intimate 
feature story in the Post. “Strikes me that’s nobody’s 
business but mine.” 


340 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“You’d be surprised,” his mentor countered with an air 
of patient explanation. “The average individual simply 
eats that sort of stuff alive. Makes him feel he knows 
you—makes you human —see? No, sir; if you’re asking 
people for their votes, you’ve got to cater to their natural 
appetites. You can’t just tell them to go to hell.” 

It was galling to have his objections continually set at 
naught by this callow stripling; yet he could not help 
being conscious of the fact that Gayly O’Brien was achiev¬ 
ing miracles. McNicol wanted more than anything else 
to be elected mayor—at almost any cost; and that was 
the consummation this obscure assessors’ clerk seemed in 
a fair way to snatch from the embers of disaster. His 
program was working. There were no more vulpine 
Frankies. However much the McNicol-for-Mayor Club 
might hysterically acclaim the turn of the tide as its own 
special by-the-grace-of-God accomplishment, the peerless 
leader himself was not deceived. However much he was 
mortified to deliver speeches that were not his own, he 
could not honestly deny that the noon rallies had become 
suddenly successful, that the unclean rabble no longer 
hooted at him, but instead boisterously applauded. 

Sometimes, indeed, in rare moments of relaxation, he 
was astounded by the new aspects of human existence 
Gayly O’Brien had unveiled to him. Only last night, he 
had been drinking beer—beer, that universal political 
lubricant!—with a convivial Polish priest—and then, 
when they were both somewhat tipsy, who should mate¬ 
rialize from some mysterious quarter but that unspeak¬ 
able rufous-complexioned leader of the Kosciusko Re¬ 
serves? But the novel feature of the episode was that 
when McNicol left at midnight he had won the undying 
allegiance of both priest and Red Sash. Such was his 
new-found genius for what O’Brien called “mixing.” 

This morning, however, the recollection was malodor- 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


34i 


ous. “Gayly may be right/’ he reasoned. “Mebbe it’s 
necessary to do such things to get elected to office. But 
after November fifth, he won’t have no say.” 

Just then his campaign manager, all unconscious of 
forthcoming demotion, reappeared in the private office 
he had promptly partitioned off in one corner of the head¬ 
quarters—over the protests of both McNicol and the 
Reverend Beemish. 

“The reporters and photographers are clamoring at the 
gates,” he apprised. “All ready to start?” 

“I suppose so.” The nominee could bring no relish 
to the appointed enterprise. “Sure you ain’t goin’ to come 
a cropper, though? Seems to me we’re bound to win, 
without pullin’ any monkeyshines like this.” 

“Don’t you ever think it!” Gayly appeared disheart¬ 
ened that his ingenious stratagem should thus fail of 
appreciation. “We’ve got to play every card we can 
think of; even then, it’s nip and tuck who’s elected. Why, 
this stunt’s liable to be the very thing that will put 
you across!” 

The conspirators embarked in two closed carriages up 
Woodward Avenue, toward the spot selected for the coup. 
There were six people in all: McNicol, Gayly O’Brien, the 
Post’s political reporter and its staff photographer, and 
similar delegates from the Globe. The opposition press 
had not been invited to the party. 

The scheme represented the fructification of O’Brien’s 
decision to start a fight, and thereby provide an inter¬ 
esting campaign issue; more specifically, to attack the 
street-railway company. The preliminary skirmish was 
to occur this morning; and the precise plan was that 
McNicol should board a street car, tender three cents, 
instead of five, in payment of his fare—be ejected by the 
conductor and then start suit against the company. 

“It’s a corker!” O’Brien effervesced. “Of course, 


342 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Pingree worked the same stunt, but it ’ll bear repeating.” 

McNicol remained gloomy. “What if the conductor 
gets ugly, or the motorman hammers me over the head 
with that iron crank of his?” 

“All the better, don’t you see?” his lieutenant radiated. 
“The people’s defender brutally assaulted. Gosh! what 
a story!” 

The carriages stopped at the corner of Erskine Street. 
The two photographers clambered out and adjusted their 
tripods—to cover the chosen scene of carnage. 

Then a northbound car appeared, and O’Brien signaled 
it to stop. 

“Here’s your fare!” he whispered, admirably thought¬ 
ful of every detail. 

McNicol, more loath than ever—not particularly relish¬ 
ing the prospect of being mutilated, even for the people— 
clambered up the rear platform. 

“Here’s three cents!” he tendered the conductor at 
once—for the drama must be staged upon the spot, within 
the purview of the cameras. “My name is McNicol, and 
this is all I’ll pay!” 

His tone grew bolder, for he had perceived at once that 
the conductor was an undersized and docile individual. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. McNicol,” said the official, “but I can’t 
let you ride for three cents.” 

“That’s all I’ll give.” 

Meanwhile the passengers, instantly alert to the un¬ 
usual, crowded about the disputants; and one indignant 
male bawled out: 

“Go on, you cheap skate, pay your nickel or get off the 
car. Don’t keep the rest of us waiting! ” 

And this was one of the citizenry for whom the peo¬ 
ple’s champion was prepared to shed his life blood! 

The apprehensive conductor still eyed McNicol plain- 



THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


343 


tively—cast one doelike glance at the waiting carriages. 
“I haven’t any choice—I have to obey the rules or lose 
my job,” he pleaded. 

“Three cents is a reasonable fare, and all I’ll pay.” 

“All right,” said the conductor, inconsiderately. “If 
you’re that hard up, I’ll pay the two cents myself.” 

The disappointed voice of a reporter became profanely 
audible from the pavement below: “Hell!” 

The impasse threatened for the moment to terminate 
most unheroically. By now, indeed, all of the passengers 
were vituperating their defender and calling upon him to 
surrender his fare or leave the car. 

“Here, old boy! I’ll lend you a nickel,” proffered the 
indignant male. 

Gayly O’Brien, beside himself with anxiety, suddenly 
leaped up on the rear platform and vociferated into the 
timid conductor’s ear, “Put him off, you fool!” 

McNicol extended his elbow obligingly, and the official, 
at last realizing what was expected of him, gently handed 
the candidate down to the pavement amid the hootings 
of the populace. 

But the cameras had clicked consolingly. That sufficed. 

“Jesus!” sighed O’Brien, devoutly, his face the color of 
chalk—then abruptly fainted in McNicol’s arms. 


IV 

It had seemed very doubtful during these last days 
whether the exhausted campaign manager could endure 
the pace to the very end; but on election morning he ap¬ 
peared in his superior’s private office at headquarters, 
haggard but still alert. 

“Read this.” He handed a circular letter across the 
desk. 


344 


THE RED-BLOOD 


November 4, 1896. 

Dear Brother Mason: 

While of course our great Order must never be exploited 
for political purposes, I trust I may without offense call your 
favorable attention to the candidacy of Brother James Pettit 
for Mayor. 

Brother Pettit is a thirty-second degree Mason and has been 
affiliated with the Order for the past twenty-five years. His 
qualifications for the mayoralty are so well known that I need 
hardly enumerate them. Let me remind you of this one fact: 
that he has held public office in this city continuously for the 
past decade. 

He is the only candidate for Mayor who has had actual 
experience in municipal government. 

Vote for the man who has had an honorable career, both in 
Masonry and in public office—JAMES PETTIT. 

Fraternally yours, 

B. W. Bismuth, 32 0 

“Judas Priest!” McNicol ejaculated. “What’s this 
mean? Who’s Bismuth?” 

Gayly shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody knows. He’s 
just some poor fish Pettit’s making a cat’s-paw of. Pettit 
wrote the letter himself. Not official, in any sense. Prob¬ 
ably the Masonic Council, or whatever they call it, will 
proceed to raise hell with Bismuth for sending out such 
a letter.” 

“How many’d he send?” 

“Oh, something like two thousand—at least Pettit’s 
headquarters did.” 

The defender of the faith was very nearly worn out, 
himself. “Jee—hoshaphat! Liable to do us a lot of 
harm, ain’t it?” 

“I doubt it. Some Masons would be sore about it, and 
others not pay any attention either way.” He smiled 
weakly. “However, in order to take no chance, I got a 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


345 


friend of mine in Pettit’s office to change the stenog¬ 
rapher’s mailing list. So this letter went instead to two 
thousand red-hot Catholics.” 

“For God’s sake!” An instant McNicol sat aghast at 
this revelation of his lieutenant’s capacity for chicane. 
Then, however, he held out his hand. “Shake! I guess 
you’ve won the election for me.” 

But O’Brien seemed apathetic, even depressed. “I wish 
I thought so.” 

A sudden pang of fear lanced the candidate’s breast. 
“What you mean?” 

Till this instant he had been superbly confident of the 
result, and O’Brien had seemed to share his optimism. 
The episode of his ejection from the street car had un¬ 
deniably awakened the city to a vivid interest in the cam¬ 
paign; and so far as they could judge, had produced a 
definite reaction in his favor. 

But now? Apparently so close to victory, he trembled. 

“Oh, you have an even chance,” the manager recited, 
glumly. “In fact, a bit better than an even chance. But 
that doesn’t satisfy me. There oughtn’t to have been any 
doubt about it by now.” 

A little later, the Post reporter—by now a sworn ally— 
came into the office; and the three of them set out in 
McNicol’s phaeton to make a brief round of the more 
central voting booths. Everywhere they received jocular 
assurances of Republican victory; but Gayly O’Brien 
refused to be comforted. 

“That’s all hot air. They don’t know any more than 
we do.” He consulted his notebook. “Let’s have a look 
at the first of the third, next.” 

Frankie’s bailiwick! 

But that stanch vassal was nowhere visible among the 
hard-looking vagrants who lounged soddenly in the vicin¬ 
ity of the booth. 



346 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“These river precincts are hell,” said the Post reporter. 
“Man got killed down here two years ago on election 
day.” 

McNicol could believe it. Directly across the street, 
he noted with a chill an undertaker’s establishment, and 
in front of it a pair of horses attached to a hearse. Evi¬ 
dently the proprietor purposed not to be taken unawares. 
Next door, not inappropriately, stood a frowsy, red- 
fronted saloon; and though its main entrance remained 
severely closed, obedient to the law, a side door swung 
continuously ajar with the ingress and egress of American 
citizens who would not be denied their inalienable right 
of access to beer. 

The three intruders disregarded the sullen looks that 
converged upon them, entered the booth, and exchanged 
the conventional amenities. As they turned to leave, there 
was a revolver-shot outside; and McNicol, who was in the 
act of stepping out upon the street, perceived an inebriate 
in front of the saloon waving his weapon somewhat indis¬ 
criminately toward the scurrying rabble. There was an¬ 
other shot. 

Just as he was about to retreat into the booth he 
detected the sound of plangent hoofbeats, and by dint of 
peering around the corner of the small edifice was enabled 
to observe his horse galloping down the street in mad 
flight, the phaeton bouncing perilously over the cobble¬ 
stones. 

“Whoa there, Tom!” he shouted, and started instinc¬ 
tively in hopeless pursuit. “Whoa!” 

Simultaneously with his confused perception of a third 
revolver-shot, he felt a sudden burning sensation in his 
back, and to his enormous surprise fell flat upon his face. 

When he became aware of his surroundings once more, 
he was being lifted into the hearse by Gayly O’Brien, the 
Post reporter, and a doleful yet expectant stranger who 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


347 

must have been the undertaker. He caught one glimpse 
of a surf of brutish faces. 

“Quick! To St. Mary’s Hospital!” snapped O’Brien, 
and he and the reporter climbed into the sinister vehicle 
after their fallen leader. 

The newspaper man seemed principally concerned with 
McNicol’s injury. “Pretty lucky!” he diagnosed. “Just 
a few inches lower-” 

Gayly, however, was fascinated, as ever, by political 
significance. “God! What a story! ‘McNicol shot down 
by thug!’ No—‘People’s friend shot by hired assassin!’ 
Couldn’t be better. And just in time for the afternoon 
papers—and the evening vote!” His voice became lyr¬ 
ically ecstatic. “Mr. Mayor, you’re in by ten thousand!” 

McNicol scrutinized his adjutant’s face sharply, won¬ 
dering a little if O’Brien had not planned the casualty 
in advance; yet by now, convinced that his wound was 
not mortal, even he was able to consider the incident as 
a not unmitigated tragedy. He felt, in truth, singularly 
happy. 

“Well, I guess I earned the job by this time,” he 
responded, with grim humor. And as he was being car¬ 
ried from the hearse into the hospital he caught a final 
view of the undertaker, now wholly sad, with a peculiar 
look of frustration on his anaemic face. 

“That man,” McNicol whispered to Gayly O’Brien, 
“tell him not to wait!” 

But at midnight, when his indefatigable campaign man¬ 
ager contrived in some mysterious way to evade the 
hospital sentries and carry through the glad tidings of 
overwhelming victory, McNicol was once more in solemn 
mood. 

“Twelve thousand, you say? . . . The People can be 
trusted to choose wisely.” 



348 THE RED-BLOOD 

His first act, characteristically, was to send a telegram 
to his mother. 


v 

The Rev. Ronald Beemish’s invocation was fervid, but 
long; and the newly inducted mayor could not refrain 
from peeping between the fingers that shaded his eyes 
devoutly. 

The Council Chamber, none too large for its usual pur¬ 
pose, was now crammed to the very gullet with immobile 
humanity—his people! The Chamber’s gullet, in fact, 
was also full: through the open entranceway he could 
envisage the outer corridor likewise suffocated with the 
less privileged masses who had not been able to produce 
tickets of admission to the inaugural exercises. McNicol 
regretted exceedingly that such discrimination had seemed 
necessary; for was he not the leader of all the people— 
the proud and the humble, the poor as well as the rich? 
Yet it appeared not wholly unjust that the members of 
his own household, and those zealous patriots who had 
formed the nucleus of his support, should be insured the 
opportunity of hearing his first public utterance. 

Over these more fortunate adherents the chief magis¬ 
trate’s covert glance passed rapidly. In the first row of 
the small gallery sat his family: Aunt Jenny; Beatrice, 
in a conspicuous orange-colored frock; even Mary, intent 
and expectant; and at one end, Lessie, fanning herself 
vigorously—for, though it was January 2d and bitterly 
cold outside, the Chamber itself was intolerably stifling 
with the generation of animal heat. His wife, clad richly 
in black silk, kept throwing little nervous glances around 
the inclosure, and more particularly at the closed balcony 
door; and it both irritated and amused him to compre¬ 
hend instantly and infallibly that she was apprehensive 
about the possibility of a fire and taking the precaution of 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


349 


deciding in advance which method of exit was most prom¬ 
ising. But his eyes clouded morosely when he thought 
of his absent sons. 

Embayed as he was behind a fringe of funereal palms, 
McNicol could descry but few of the spectators on the 
main floor. From directly in front of the platform, how¬ 
ever, came an unmistakable blur of scarlet—a small 
detachment of the Kosciusko Reserves, headed doubtless 
by Red Sash himself. Over at one side was plainly visible 
the boys’ band which had consented to furnish music for 
the great occasion; its bass drum, perched upon a desk, 
was proudly inscribed, “Mission of the Immaculate Con¬ 
ception”; and while the youthful musicians seemed to be 
able to play but one selection, “Hail to the Chief,” no one 
could deny the lustiness of their interpretation. 

Reverend Beemish seemed determined to continue 
praying until he dropped from sheer exhaustion. The vast 
audience, patient, respectful, suffering its vast discomfort 
heroically, now began to sway a little with restlessness. 
McNicol, too, resented the clergyman’s overlong assump¬ 
tion of the central role. 

“What’s the old boy think an invocation is, anyhow?” 
he smoldered. A sharp twinge of pain shot through his 
wounded back. 

With them on the platform was the president of the 
Common Council, who was acting as master of ceremonies. 
But Gayly O’Brien, the real author of this magnificent 
culmination, sat obscurely in the body of the house, not 
far from the boys’ band. The sight of his alert, sagacious 
face distilled conflicting emotions in the new mayor: he 
was not lacking in gratitude for his campaign manager’s 
achievements, he hoped; yet already he was persuaded 
that he himself, and not O’Brien, had been the master 
mind who had guided the ship safely to anchorage—in 
brief, that he would probably have been elected without 




THE RED-BLOOD 


350 

the benefit of expert Celtic assistance. The thought of 
his two years’ compact with the young Irishman was not 
ingratiating; and his restiveness had not been decreased 
by the discovery that Artemas Bigelow had secretly guar¬ 
anteed the full salary of five thousand dollars a year, and 
that therefore, he, McNicol, was morally bound to fulfill 
the contract himself. 

“By Jiminy! Gayly ain’t a-goin’ to run me!” he 
silently vowed. “I’m my own boss. No more cheap 
politics for me.” The purity of his motives, his exalted 
conception of office and of his duty to his constituents, 
kindled a mighty flame in his bosom. “I’m a-goin’ to be 
the servant of the common people, I am!” 

Near O’Brien he now discerned the disconsolate features 
of Joe Cottrell. 

“How’d he get in?” McNicol was properly indignant. 
Thus far he had steadfastly refused to grant the traitor 
audience. “If he thinks he’s ever goin’ to cuddle up to 
me again, he’s got another guess a-comin’.” 

The Reverend Beemish was still quavering for divine 
intermediation. That added to the new chief magistrate’s 
exasperation. “Oh, dry up!” he silently vituperated. 

Yet this somehow ridiculous preacher was the sole 
representative of the McNicol-for-Mayor Club present. 
The other members had sent back their tickets of admis¬ 
sion, thereby delicately intimating a deserved rebuke. 
The Forces of Righteousness were frankly shocked by 
their spotless leader’s list of appointments to office. Not 
that a single one of them had been actuated by selfish am¬ 
bitions! Yet the high-school teacher considered that he 
had a perfect right to feel insulted by McNicol’s failure to 
nominate him police commissioner. Both of the phy¬ 
sicians had apparently counted on the health commission- 
ership. The insurance man let it be known he might be 
willing to assume administration of the department of 


THE PEOPLE’S PALADIN 


35i 


public works. And so on. Understand clearly, once more, 
that personal pique had absolutely nothing to do with the 
Club’s dignified resentment. Heavens, no! It was sim¬ 
ply the principle of the thing. 

“Fools! Why, they ain’t one of ’em could run a 
peanut stand!” 

Upon this mood of disenchantment came the sudden 
perception that the loyal Beemish had at last, incredibly, 
delivered the merciful coup de grace: 

“Amen.” 

While the boys’ band was again blatting out “Hail to 
the Chief,” McNicol hastily adjusted his white bow tie 
and grasped the manuscript of his inaugural address. 
His address, not Gayly O’Brien’s. The recollection sent 
a tingle of pride pulsating through him; and when he 
faced his applauding audience over the buttress of palms 
he was no longer debilitated by the remotest doubt of his 
mission, or of the refulgence of the years that opened out 
ahead of him. All his recent disillusions and self-doubt- 
ings seemed swallowed up. 

A marvelous achievement, his—and all in one short 
year! 

“Fellow citizens,” he began. 

But within the secret recesses of his heart, another 
voice—the voice of that raw backwoods bumpkin on the 
escarpment—kept trumpeting: 

“By the Lord Harry! I guess I’m a Great Man now!” 










I 


BOOK FOUR: A GREAT MAN 


BOOK FOUR: A GREAT MAN 


CHAPTER I 

THE GOOD SCOUT 

I 

'TpHE telegram lay on his desk, and though he already 
-■* knew its content, he sat down and perused it 
thoughtfully. 

Nelson's Point, Mich. 

Sept. 5, 1898. 

Hon. W. D. McNicol, 

Mayor, Detroit, Mich. 

Big Labor Day celebration here to-morrow afternoon. Life¬ 
saving drill, baseball game, patriotic speeches. Thousands 
will attend. Committee respectfully invites you deliver ad¬ 
dress of the day. Take Grand Trunk noon train. Wire reply 
at once. 

W. P. Tompkins, Chairman. 

McNicol glanced at his watch. Already it was nearly 
ten, and he frowned. The telegram had been dispatched 
late last night, but evidently had not been received at the 
Detroit office till early this morning. It was only by grace 
of luck he had received it at all; his faithful secretary, 
who observed no holidays, had reached the office at half 
past eight, found the message under the door, and routed 
his master out of bed by telephone. 

Now the mayor frowned a second time. He had 
instantly communicated with Gayly O’Brien and Artemas 
Bigelow, and they had engaged themselves to meet him at 

355 


356 THE RED-BLOOD 

nine thirty. Then he snatched a telegraph blank and 
scribbled: 

Sept. 6, 1898. 

W. P. Tompkins, 

Nelson’s Point, Mich. 

Message delayed. Accept with pleasure. Arrive via noon 
train. 

Just as he was about to ring for the secretary, Artemas 
Bigelow entered. “Hello, Your Worship! What’s up?” 

McNicol handed over the telegram and his tentative 
reply without comment. 

“Great hat!” exclaimed the attorney. “What d’ you 
want to monkey with that outfit for, anyhow? Nothing 
but a lot of rubes. Why waste your splendid talents on 
Nelson’s Point?” 

The mayor looked exceedingly sagacious. “Because 
I’m thinkin’ of 1900. Because I’m a-goin’ to make the 
run for Governor or U. S. Senator, and I’ll be needin’ all 
the rube votes I can pick up.” 

His confidant appeared not at all impressed. “Better 
wait until you’ve been reelected mayor, hadn’t you?” 

“Huh!” grunted McNicol, and gave the reply telegram 
to his secretary for immediate transmission. “I guess 
you’re the only person in Detroit who has any doubts 
about me bein’ reelected—and you don’t count, you ol’ 
croaker. Why it’s a walkaway!” 

Even the pessimistic Bigelow could not seriously argue 
to the contrary. There was indeed only a nominal oppo¬ 
sition to his friend this year: no doughty Jim Pettit, no 
hypocritical Joe Cottrell stealthily marshaling the cohorts 
of iniquity on the other side. Instead, a mere figurehead 
of a Democratic candidate—a cantankerous radical lawyer 
whom nobody liked; Joe Cottrell penitently endeavoring 
to erase his disloyalty of two years ago and ingratiate 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


357 


himself into McNicoFs favor; the Forces of Righteousness, 
if not so vociferous as formerly, at least not hostilely dis¬ 
posed. And more than all this, was not McNicol Detroit’s 
famous war mayor? Had not the city but lately rever¬ 
berated to his flaming denunciation of Spanish iniquity? 
Had he not sent hundreds of ardent, youthful soldiers to 
Cuba, and blessed them in the name of the city upon their 
return—those, at least, who did return? Had he not 
unleashed the community’s fury upon those hapless Span¬ 
iards who were found within the city gates? Yes, it must 
be said for him that he had made the most of his political 
opportunities; his only regret, in fact, was that the war 
was so soon over. 

Artemas Bigelow knew all this, of course, but, instead 
of admitting his error like a man, chose to continue 
gloomy. “Anyhow, why turn Gayly and me out of bed at 
the screech of dawn, for a minor detail like this? Espe¬ 
cially since you never pay any attention to what we say, 
any more.” He yawned violently. In truth, he did look 
very tired. 

McNicol laughed loudly—and his laugh was significant 
of the profound changes that had been taking place in his 
character and viewpoints. Two years ago, Bigelow’s 
salient thrust would have left him either indignant or pain¬ 
fully on the defensive; in any case, he would have dis¬ 
puted solemnly over the accusation. But twenty months 
of officeholding had taught him the ineffable superiority 
of sugar over vinegar, the indispensable emollient of easy 
good humor, of tolerance, of being a “good fellow.” On 
public occasions, he could still affect a befitting earnest¬ 
ness; at funerals, a proper melancholy. But ordinarily, 
now, he smiled, chuckled, slapped backs, called men by 
their Christian names immediately after introduction. 
Nor was this new facile bonhomie of his a mere outward 
form, a Jesuitical maneuver. Politics had relaxed most 




THE RED-BLOOD 


358 

of his former Calvinistic judgments of things and people, 
and by dint of a very simple process: the politicians with 
whom he was in almost exclusive contact nowadays were 
all men of generous, easy-going dispositions; naturally he 
accepted their manners by degrees, and then their stand¬ 
ards. One conforms imperceptibly. As he came to know 
them intimately, his distrust vanished; he found himself 
palliating their slight defections from austerer standards. 
And actually, he was now kindlier disposed toward every 
man than he had once been. He had learned the game, 
he was a player in it; and his new familiarity with the 
rules had brought him a comfortable complaisance. More 
especially, a touching faith in the efficacy of sheer joviality 
as a panacea for all ills. 

Thus his bantering tone to Artemas Bigelow: “Never 
pay no ’tention to what you tell me, ay? Don’t you ever 
believe it, my boy. Your advice helps me a good deal, 
because I’m always safe in doin’ just the opposite—see?” 
This new and persistently riant McNicol laughed loud 
and long. “What’s the matter with you, anyway, this 
mornin’? You got just as much sleep as I did.” 

This was presumably accurate, for the two had simul¬ 
taneously quitted an alcoholic political rally at a late hour 
the night before. But the attorney refused to be other 
than sour faced. 

“Oh, come, now—cheer up!” And McNicol with a 
wink opened the lower drawer in his desk and abstracted a 
quart bottle of whisky. “This ’ll do the trick for you.” 

An expression of nauseated aversion sped into Bige¬ 
low’s weary face. “Never again!” 

It comported with the host’s sense of humor to apply the 
bottle to his own lips, and at the same time to relish the 
queasiness in his friend’s face. Bigelow, in fact, was com¬ 
pelled to glance hastily out of the window—then quite 



THE GOOD SCOUT 


359 

without explanation, his jaded eyes flickered with ex- 
pectant curiosity. 

“Watch out! Don’t let him see you!” 

He drew McNicol out of his desk chair, and from safe 
vantage ground indicated a certain window in the office 
building across the street. There, in plain view, sat a 
gentleman almost as obese and bald headed as the mayor 
himself, with a young woman in his lap. 

McNicol, though not so excited as his friend, was 
highly diverted. 

“By Jiminy! Look at ’em! Who is it?” 

“Who is it? One of my most distinguished brethren 
at the bar! His name is Michels.” Bigelow’s interest in 
life had suddenly revived; he could even sample the excel¬ 
lent contents of the bottle now. All at once an expression 
of unholy joy possessed his features; he searched through 
the telephone book, then called a certain number. 

They beheld the fat man opposite disengage an amorous 
arm and reach for his telephone. 

“Hello!” said Bigelow, in sepulchral tones. “Mr. 
Michels? Well, I advise you to leave off hugging that 
lady. Your wife might not like it!” 

The lawyer in the office opposite could be seen spring¬ 
ing up in wild alarm, so abruptly that his fair burden was 
very nearly thrown to the floor. Bigelow, his face apo¬ 
plectic with suppressed hilarity, whispered to McNicol: 

“He wants to know who I am.” Then into the receiver, 
he announced: “This, sir, is the ghost of your better self. 
In two minutes from now I shall be knocking at your 
door.” 

The obese one dropped his telephone and disappeared 
from view. 

“He’s gone to lock the door!” laughed McNicol. 

Artemas Bigelow, in the midst of his frantic outbursts 


THE RED-BLOOD 


360 

of mirth, suddenly had the further notion of telephoning 
the janitor of the office building. 

“Hello! This is Mr. Smith in the McGraw Building. 
I just saw Mr. Michels standing at the window of his 
office on the third floor of your building. You know? 
Well, he fell over in a faint, and I think you’d better rush 
right up there and see what’s happened. Break in the 
door, if necessary—maybe he’s dying!” 

The fat man had reappeared at the window by now, 
and was peering out in every direction, attempting appar¬ 
ently to discover the whereabouts of his better self. Once 
his apprehensive glance swept the windows of the mayor’s 
office, but the two conspirators were safely beyond the 
reach of his vision. Just behind him hovered the puzzled 
young woman. Then they both started nervously and 
turned away; the janitor was storming at the door. 
Finally the gallant disappeared again, and a moment later 
a second man—evidently the janitor—came to the window 
and pointed toward the McGraw Building. The obese 
culprit, his face as red as fire, shook his head as if em¬ 
phatically denying the report of his fainting spell. 

“You needn’t laugh so hard,” McNicol pointed out 
presently to the practical joker. “That’s exactly what ’ll 
happen to you one of these days, unless you mend your 
ways.” 

“No fear for the man who’s discreet. Besides, I’m 
not married.” Bigelow surveyed his friend with a humor¬ 
ous and frankly sensual eye. “In any event, I’d rather 
take the chance of being found out than be a chaste 
henpecked husband like you.” 

“I ain’t henpecked!” 

“Not, eh? I’ll lay you an even five dollars you got 
dressed down last night for coming home drunk.” 

The mayor endeavored in vain to cut off a sheepish 
expression before it reached his face. 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


361 

“You see?” twitted Bigelow. Then very confidentially, 
“Say—when are you going to let my Katerina find a 
friend for you?” 

In spite of the fact that he was now a man of the 
world, in spite of the further fact that his attorney was 
constantly chaffing him for his scruples, McNicol still 
could blush. 

“No, sir, when it comes to morals-” 

“Morals!” scoffed Bigelow. “Morals are only for the 
inferior man. Isn’t that right, Gayly?” 

O’Brien, who had reached the office in time to witness 
the final act of the comedy across the street, shook his 
head. “The mayor is right on that point.” 

“Pooh!” said Bigelow. “I forgot you were an Irish 
ascetic.” 

“It’s not a question of asceticism,” O’Brien retorted. 
“In the case of a man in public office, it’s a question of 
blackmail. Too dangerous, I’d say.” 

11 

McNicol ought to have been gratified by his political 
manager’s support on this question of personal morals. 
Artemas Bigelow had the knack somehow of making 
amour seem an alluring and adventurous pastime, of con¬ 
veying to his scrupulous companion a subtle intimation 
that he was missing an important and delightful aspect 
of life by being too strait-laced. Marital infidelity was a 
commonplace, moreover, among the politicians with whom 
McNicol was now so friendly—a circumstance that was 
not without its weight. 

Yes, he needed reassurance; yet Gayly O’Brien’s sage 
prudence had the effect of secretly irritating him. The 
truth of the situation was that everything Gayly said on 
any subject, these days, produced an unfailing antagonism 



362 


THE RED-BLOOD 


in his superior. No matter how tactful he might be in his 
suggestions, McNicol conceived this same covert resent¬ 
ment; usually he disregarded his assistant’s advice with 
the sole motive of establishing his independence, of prov¬ 
ing that he could not be dictated to by any man. 

“Let’s not waste time over such foolishness,” he pre¬ 
scribed, and handed the telegram to O’Brien. “I couldn’t 
wait for you and Bigelow to show up, so I told ’em I’d 
come.” 

Gayly lifted an eyebrow. “It’s all right, but what’s 
the good?” 

“Just what I asked,” put in Bigelow. The two inevi¬ 
tably worked hand and glove together in all questions of 
policy. 

A second time McNicol laid stress on his future plans. 
“I got to begin linin’ up state support for 1900. Goin’ 
to be either Governor or Senator.” It was on the tip of 
his tongue to add: “And in 1904 I’m a-goin’ to run for 
President.” But he checked himself resolutely; this latest 
and most cherished ambition of his must not be revealed 
to any one for the present. 

O’Brien shrugged his shoulders, as if the Nelson’s 
Point speech was of little importance, one way or the 
other; then, with an air of recollection, extracted a news¬ 
paper from his pocket. “You’ve seen this article in the 
Sun, of course?” 

The mayor shook his head and took the paper in silence. 
Bigelow leaned over his shoulder to read the front-page 
headlines: 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


363 


HOW ABOUT IT, McNICOL? 


Open Letter to Hizzoner From Democratic Candidate 

Cheadle 


A SHOCKING RECORD OF BROKEN PLEDGES AND SHAMEFUL 

EXTRAVAGANCE 


William Cheadle, Democratic nominee for mayor, last night 
sent the following open letter to his Republican rival, Mayor 
W. D. McNicol: 

“Sir: 

“I hereby respectfully request an answer to the following 
questions, which the thoughtful voters of Detroit are beginning 
to demand enlightenment upon: 

“1. In your letter of acceptance two years ago, you stated, 
‘If elected, I shall serve but one term, because I cannot help 
but feel that it is a dangerous thing for one man to hold the 
same office too long.’ 

“Question: What has caused you to change your mind an 
this point, Mr. Mayor? 

“2. In the same letter, you stated, ‘I shall make no cam¬ 
paign. I will have no machine/ It is a notorious fact, how¬ 
ever, that during your two years in office you have built up the 
most flagrantly corrupt political machine this city has ever 
known; and, further, that in order to do this, you have shame¬ 
lessly and openly prostituted the public service. 

“Question: What has caused you to change your mind on 
this point, Mr. Mayor? 

“3. In the same letter you stated, ‘My only object will be 
to serve the people of this great city/ 

“Question: You have now been mayor for twenty months. 
How have you served the people? Please specify one solitary 
piece of constructive legislation you have enacted. One soli¬ 
tary achievement of any kind your administration is respon- 





364 


THE RED-BLOOD 


sible for. You promised the people a business administration. 
Why is it, then, the poor are groaning wider the highest tax 
rate in Detroit’s history? 

“4. In your campaign two years ago, and in many public 
utterances since that time, you have promised the people three- 
cent street-car fares. You have also promised them municipal 
ownership. 

“Question: What have you actually done to redeem your 
promises? Is it not a fact that you have instructed your 
attorney not to bring your suit against the street-railway com¬ 
pany to trial until after the November election? Is it not a 
fact that the political agent of the company, P. A. Morgan, is 
an intimate crony of yours, and that you conspire with him to 
keep the people fooled, and that you are frequently to he seen 
drinking with him in public saloons? 

“5. You have made a great display of the fact that you 
were Detroit's ‘war mayor.' 

“Question: Which of your two sons enlisted? Also, do you 
deny that one of your ancestors fled to Canada from New 
York state during the Revolutionary War, and that he later 
fought as a traitor with Butler’s Rangers against George Wash¬ 
ington’s noble patriots? I wall spare you further embarrassing 
inquiries regarding your ancestry. 

“In conclusion, Your Honor, let me state that I not only 
demand a full answer to these questions, but I also challenge 
you to a series of public debates before the people of this city. 
Your refusal to answer my questions, and to accept my chal¬ 
lenge, will brand you as either afraid or unable to defend your 
administration, and therefore unfit for the office you hold. 

“Respectfully, 

“Wm. Cheadle.” 

Bigelow was the first to speak: “I like that ‘respect¬ 
fully’ at the end. A nice touch.” 

But McNicol was in a gigantic passion. “I’ll break 

every bone in the-’s body!” he shouted, and bounded 

up as if to seek out the perfidious Cheadle at once. 

“Sit steady, Mr. Mayor!” The attorney and Gayly 



THE GOOD SCOUT 365 

O’Brien pushed him back into his chair. All his usual 
equanimity had woefully vanished. 

“You start suit against him for criminal libel to-day!” 

“Can’t—it’s a holiday,” objected Bigelow. “Besides, 
I doubt if it’s libelous. In politics, you’re allowed to say 
almost anything you want about an opponent. And, any¬ 
way, most of what Cheadle writes is true.” 

“True!” McNicol could not believe his ears. 

“Well, isn’t it? You did say you wanted only one 
term, didn’t you?” 

Their close friendship of twenty years seemed toppling 
at the edge of a yawning precipice. The mayor glared 
ferociously. 

“Of course I did—an’ I meant it, too. I been forced t’ 
run for a second term against my own wishes, by the 
demands of the people.” 

“Quite so,” Bigelow agreed, placidly, “and you were 
quite justified in changing your mind. The fact remains, 
however, you did change your mind, and you can’t put 
Cheadle in jail for calling attention to the fact.” He 
picked up the newspaper. “The same holds good about 
his second point: You did attack machine rule; yet the 
fact remains you’ve got a very tidy little organization of 
your own, now.” 

“But he says it’s corrupt, an’ it ain’t. I can’t help it, 
can I, if I’m popular with the boys who round up the 
votes? I can’t help it if they want me to be their leader. 
I didn’t ask ’em to. Anyhow, ain’t a man like me, with 
high ideals of his office, justified in keepin’ himself in 
power an’ not lettin’ some crooked ignoramus like Cheadle 
hoodwink the voters? Ain’t it my duty to have a machine, 
so long as it’s a good machine?” 

“You bet your sweet life it is!” confirmed Bigelow. 
“You misunderstood me: I’m not holding a brief for this 
booby, Cheadle. I’m merely telling you he can’t be sued 


THE RED-BLOOD 


366 

for showing w r here you’ve changed your mind. Now as 
to his third question: you can’t deny that the tax rate is 
higher; but you can point out that the city’s growing and 
needs more money in proportion than it used to. Fourth: 
It’s true enough you’ve instructed me to delay your case 
against the street-car company till after election; but 
that’s just a shot in the dark, as far as Cheadle’s con¬ 
cerned. We don’t have to admit the fact. What you 
can’t deny is that you’ve been foolish enough to get caught 
drinking with Phil Morgan.” 

“That’s a lie! I never had a drink with him in any 
saloon—at least, not except mebbe when they was a 
crowd of us together.” McNicol breathed hard. “I’m 
not sayin’ I ain’t never give Morgan a nip of whisky, but 
never outside this here private office. He’s a good fellow, 
even if he is with the street-car company; he’s got to earn 
a livin’ some way, ain’t he? And whose business is it, 
anyhow?” He snatched up the Sun. “But what gets 
me fightin’ mad about this here letter is pokin’ into my 
private affairs. This stuff ’bout my sons—and ’bout 
Butler’s Rangers! I don’t know nothin’ ’bout Butler’s 
Rangers; but even if it’s so, it’s dirty politics—you got 
to admit that.” 

“Sure it is, but not libelous,” insisted the lawyer in 
Artemas Bigelow. “He doesn’t say anything; he just 
asks questions. No, siree, the thing to do is not sue him, 
but answer him! You can make him look mighty sick, 
I tell you. Publish your own war record, tell about how 
you were wounded for vour country—then ask him point 
blank what he did in the Civil War.” 

“By Timiny! ” The sullen indignation in the chief mag¬ 
istrate’s florid face surrendered to extreme thoughtfulness. 
“I believe you hit it right, at that. I’ll write him an 
answer that ’ll knock him into a cocked hat. I’ll jus’ 
take him up on them public debates-” 




THE GOOD SCOUT 


367 

“No, no!” The interruption, low spoken but decisive, 
came from Gayly O’Brien, who had thus far remained 
wholly silent. “Don’t do anything of the sort!” 

“An’ why not?” McNicol turned pettishly upon his 
irreverent censor. 

“Because that’s exactly what Cheadle wants you to do. 
Don’t you see, you’ll just be playing into his hand. 
He’s-” 

The ring of the telephone cut in upon the colloquy. 
Gayly O’Brien, though farthest from the instrument, lifted 
the receiver quickly. 

“Hello! . . . Yes, we’ve seen Mr. Cheadle’s letter. 
. . . Nothing. ... No, not a word. The mayor isn’t 
going to dignify personal attacks of that kind by making 
a reply.” 

He hung up the receiver and announced simply, “The 
Herald ” 

Once again, McNicol bitterly resented the young Irish¬ 
man’s assumption of authority—an assumption that in¬ 
ferred that he, the mayor, was an incompetent infant, 
whose judgment was not to be trusted. 

“Look here, Gayly! You got no right to go over my 
head that way. I don’t allow no man to make my deci¬ 
sions for me.” 

O’Brien appeared surprised and slightly apologetic. 
“But don’t you see—?” he began. “Let me explain, and 
then if you’re not convinced, you can call up the Herald 
yourself and make any statement you choose.” 

Bigelow, for once in his life, seemed on McNicol’s side. 
“You don’t mean you’d completely ignore Cheadle’s at¬ 
tack, surely?” 

“That’s the idea. Listen—here’s the way the cam¬ 
paign stands to-day: The mayor’s reelection seems abso¬ 
lutely certain, by twenty thousand majority at least. The 
political workers are all plugging for him; he’ll get the 



TI-IE RED-BLOOD 


368 

votes that were against him two years ago. The reform¬ 
ers, the intelligent silk-stockings, are pretty much asleep 
—as usual; they may not be shouting for the mayor, as 
they did before, but at least they’re not definitely against 
him. That’s the situation Cheadle’s up against, and not 
quite fool enough to be ignorant of the facts. He has 
no friends, no organization. His only hope is to stir up 
a fight with the mayor, get people excited—just as that 
was our only hope last election. If he can get the mayor 
involved in a personal controversy, he thinks he has a 
chance; he’ll have the offensive, we the defensive; and 
it’s always easy to pick flaws in the other fellow’s job. 
In other words, Cheadle has everything to gain and noth¬ 
ing to lose; but with you, it’s just the opposite—see? 
The minute you start exchanging letters with him, or 
debating with him, you raise him to your own importance, 
you make people begin to take him seriously. No, just 
don’t pay any attention to him and you automatically 
rob him of his sting—see? He’ll just fizzle out. More 
than that, his attacks on your personal character are apt 
to be a boomerang.” 

This compact precis, so incisive, so brilliantly discern¬ 
ing, convinced even the disaffected McNicol; yet his sense 
of personal indignity still smoldered. 

“Just what I was thinkin’ myself,” he hastily asserted. 
“Only we ain’t a-goin’ to go to sleep. We got to make 
a good vigorous campaign, just on general principles.” 

“Oh yes, by all means,” agreed Gayly. “And we’ll 
answer every point in Cheadle’s letter, but without any 
reference to him—see? We’ll stir up another row with 
the street-car company, just to satisfy the public’s appe¬ 
tite for gore. Somehow or other, we’ll manage to keep 
the dear people entertained and distracted from now until 
election. The war stuff can be played up very nicely, of 
course.” 



THE GOOD SCOUT 


369 

“Bully!” exclaimed Bigelow. “How about that But¬ 
ler’s Rangers business? D’you think the mayor had bet¬ 
ter find out the facts?” 

“I doubt it,” said O’Brien. All at once his blue eyes 
sparkled with swift ingenuity. “Poor old Cheadle cer¬ 
tainly put his foot in it when he insinuated that neither 
of the mayor’s sons was in the war.” 

McNicol blinked uncomprehendingly. “What you get- 
tin’ at now?” 

“Why, Arthur, of course!” 

“News to me,” admitted Artemas Bigelow. “What’s 
Arthur been up to?” 

“You must have been dozing.” O’Brien diplomatically 
addressed himself to the attorney alone, with the assump¬ 
tion that McNicol, of course, had heard the news. 
“Arthur’s made a proud record for himself, I’m saying. 
Enlisted as a private in the Rough Riders—from some 
place out west—and ended up with two wounds and a 
captain’s commission. Just got back to town yesterday.” 

The mayor neglected his cue. “Arthur did! But 
where’d you see him?” 

“In the Russell House bar, last night. Now that I 
think of it, he said he was staying at the hotel tempo¬ 
rarily. I’d better get hold of a photograph of him and 
shove it into the Globe to-morrow morning, with a good 
story. That ’ll be nail number one in Cheadle’s coffin.” 

Bigelow, remembering Arthur’s scandalous dalliance 
with Selma, the waitress, glanced at McNicol. “Captain, 
eh? A chip off the old block. That’s exactly the mayor’s 
war record—from private to captain. Don’t forget to put 
that in the paper, Gayly. Quite a coincidence.” 

McNicol’s heart was an arena in which pride, astonish¬ 
ment, relief, and faint annoyance clashed confusingly. 
How happy Lessie would be over her favorite child’s 
triumphant return. Triumphant! That was the fly in 


370 


THE RED-BLOOD 


the ointment. Arthur ought really to have come back a 
destitute and penitent prodigal, eager to make amends 
for past sins. But his crowning error was that he had 
returned to the city without letting his father know. Had 
he come to the Mausoleum promptly, sought out his fam¬ 
ily with proper expressions of apology, McNicol would 
have forgiven him, hero or not. But Arthur was living 
riotously at an expensive hotel! His father scowled for¬ 
biddingly. 

“No, sir,” he directed O’Brien. “I don’t want nothin’ 
in the papers ’bout Arthur. Not now, anyway.” 

Both the campaign manager and Bigelow exhibited 
amazement. 

“But think of the publicity!” began the lawyer. 

“Publicity be damned!” the mayor exclaimed, fiercely. 
“Not a word—understand?” 


in 


As he drove home to invest himself in the more resplen¬ 
dent raiment he wore on all notable occasions—frock 
coat, starched white shirt, white bow tie, patent-leather 
shoes, striped trousers—he was reflecting somewhat mood¬ 
ily upon the irreconcilable discrepancy between his public 
and his private life. 

A Great Man. “Detroit’s dynamic mayor,” with a 
state-wide—nay, national—reputation. His reelection as 
mayor was assured. Nothing short of malignant ill fate 
could prevent his elevation to the Governorship or Sen- 
atorship two years hence; even the White House beckoned 
benignly at intervals through the roseate mists that clus¬ 
tered about the path leading upward to the higher alti¬ 
tudes. 

A Great Man, in very surety. Yet each night when he 
came home—trailing clouds of glory, as it were—he must 





THE GOOD SCOUT 


37 i 


leave his wrappings of magnificence outside the door and 
enter a household that neither appreciated his greatness 
nor gave him recuperative peace. The Mausoleum itself 
was an abode worthy to house a statesman; it remained 
by all odds the gaudiest residence in the city; people still 
paused in front of it to gape at its truly astonishing 
fagade. No, his dissatisfaction had to do, not with the 
Mausoleum, but with its occupants—with his family. 

With his wife, first of all. Lessie had not kept pace 
with him, nor even tried to. She seemed, in fact, to have 
no conception of the wondrous transfigurations the last 
two years had wrought. It was as if the affliction of 
physical deafness had closed her ears to the world’s 
strident applauding. She knew, of course, she was the 
wife of the mayor of one of the largest cities in the land, 
but she was utterly without comprehension of her enlarged 
duties and responsibilities. The Mausoleum, which ought 
by rights to have become the rendezvous for all that was 
glittering and elegant, stood resentfully, bleakly barren 
from one season’s end to another. Even Ellen Foss, even 
McNicol’s own prestige, could not coax people into paying 
devoirs to an unpretentious hostess whose unfailing salu¬ 
tation continued to be: “I’m real glad to see you. It’s 
real nice of you to come.” 

McNicol was not the only member of the family who 
chafed at the handicap of Lessie’s limitations. Beatrice, 
the imperious, the high-strung, was even more discon¬ 
tented. There was this difference between them, however: 
whereas her father was inextricably enmeshed by the steel 
cords of marriage, Beatrice was a free agent. If the 
fashionable world would not come to her in the Mau¬ 
soleum, she was at perfect liberty to seek it out in its own 
abode. Which was exactly what she had done, since her 
graduation from the New York finishing school; and now, 
by virtue of indefatigable effort and the ruthless pruning 



372 


THE RED-BLOOD 


off of earlier, less desirable acquaintances, she had 
steered her course into the inmost labyrinths of the 
fashionable younger set. This very month she was spend¬ 
ing at an exclusive Massachusetts summer resort, as the 
guest of the Harrison Pitkins, one of the city’s oldest and 
richest families. She had been away from home all 
summer, in fact. 

McNicol’s hurr> T ing carriage turned in at the private 
driveway and he stared gloomily up at the Mausoleum. 

“By Golly! I wish Bee was here!” He missed her 
gayety, her pert youthfulness, more than he cared to 
admit. Then his melancholy lifted a little. “But I don’t 
blame her for stayin’ away. She’s got the right idea. 
Some ‘go’ to her—that’s what. A perfect dandy!” 

As he issued from the vehicle he was scowling again. 
“But she’s the only one of the lot that’s worth the powder 
to blow ’em up.” 

The nude nymph and Babe’s stone effigy had the hall¬ 
way to themselves; he had not taken time to telephone 
Lessie about his unforeseen trip, and no one was expect¬ 
ing him to return home so early in the day. The second 
floor seemed similarly deserted. 

In his own room, however, on the bureau, he found a 
special-delivery letter addressed to him—left there pre¬ 
sumably by Lessie against his homecoming. The envelope 
was postmarked Chicago and bore his son John’s all too 
familiar handwriting. 

He opened it with a pang of disquietude. There was 
no date, not even the usual introductory phrase. 

For God’s sake, pa, why don’t you pay any attention to my 
letters? I beg of you to come and see me, and take me back 
home with you, away from this horrible place. Don’t you 
believe what I’ve written about the cruel treatment here? I 
am all right now, and there is no reason for my being locked 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


373 

up and punished like a criminal. What have I done to deserve 
this fate? 

But if you still believe there’s anything wrong with me, 
please at least take me to some other place. I will promise 
to go willingly, to make you no trouble. Anything but this. 

Maybe my other letters have been meddled with and never 
have reached you. Or maybe you have been fooled by what 
the supt. writes you. You have been here to see me only once, 
and that time I swear I had been drugged or something. 

But I am bribing the janitor to mail this letter and it will 
surely reach you and make you do something for me. When 
you know the truth your blood will boil. If I don’t hear from 
you, I will know you have no pity in you, and I swear I will 
take my own life rather than spend it here in this hell-hole. 
I am just that desperate, pa. 

Love to all from your unhappy 

John McNicol. 

The great man crumpled the letter in one fist and was 
about to throw it into the waste basket, when he found 
himself suddenly pinioned and swept away in a mighty 
avalanche of remorse. Quite useless to remind himself he 
had carefully investigated the Chicago “home” and found 
it a scientifically, efficiently conducted institution with 
letters of strong recommendation from a hundred repu¬ 
table physicians. Quite useless to assure himself that 
John’s piteous complaints had no foundation in fact— 
were, indeed, the predictable delusions of his disease. 
Quite futile to defend his conduct in having withheld 
John’s earlier letters from Lessie. Was it not the humane 
and sensible course to tell her that their stricken son was 
wholly content and thereby spare her unnecessary suffer¬ 
ing? 

That smear of ink across the very last line of the letter 
—as if from wretched tears! That piercing recollection of 
John’s final look of pathetic trustfulness, the night of his 


374 


THE RED-BLOOD 


going to Chicago! The distressing visualization of his 
own hideous servitude on the Grizard farm! He bowed 
his head in an anguish of self-accusation, convicted for 
the moment at least of a gross and indefensible betrayal 
of his own flesh and blood. 

“I’ll go over and see John right off,” he took a vow of 
expiation. ‘Til find out just what’s goin’ on.” 

He felt better. After all, he had done only what other 
parents did. It was heart-wringing, it was tragic—yet 
it was in no sense his fault. Manifestly, John couldn’t 
be kept at home. And was it not McNicol’s solemn duty 
to think of his political future—to permit no accidental 
dissonance to rob him of his potential power to serve great 
masses of his fellow beings? Suppose he gave way to his 
present fit of sentimentality and brought John home at 
once; suppose John stole out of the house one fine day 
and had another fit, say on Woodward Avenue. How 
quickly the news would spread! With what zest the 
inimical Sun and Herald would set forth the misfortune! 
What use of it might not the unscrupulous Cheadle make? 
People were queer about such things; some base appetite 
for the unsavory animated them. There would be whis¬ 
perings about the mayor’s family life, and snickerings. 
Such a calamity might even cost him the election. 

No, he could not afford to take the chance. 

“I’ll have to find some other place for John,” he mut¬ 
tered; and a vague annoyance crept into his heart once 
more. These plaguing, mortifying children of his: the 
half-witted John; Mary, restless, unhappy, still dreaming 
of an impossible and immediate Utopia on earth; and now 
Arthur, impenitent and the most ungrateful of the lot. 
Why had he ever been cursed with such a vexatious 
brood? 

Suddenly he remembered more immediate urgencies. 
The coachman was Waiting below, and he must hurry if 



THE GOOD SCOUT 


375 


he would catch the noon train to Nelson’s Point. Half¬ 
way through his change of attire, he stepped toward the 
bathroom to wash his face and hands, then paused in con¬ 
siderable astonishment, aware of some peculiar noise on 
the other side of the door. 

He listened more intently; and now the sound, he dis¬ 
covered, resolved itself into the splashing of water. 
Lessie taking a bath—yet somehow the perception sur¬ 
prised him; his wife was not given to indulging in such 
rites in the middle of the forenoon. 

“Lessie!” he called, and, hearing no response, pulled 
the door open impatiently and entered the bathroom. 
Then again he paused abruptly, more taken aback than 
he had ever been in his whole life. For the occupant of 
the tub was not Lessie at all, but a strange man. An 
unprepossessing man with matted hair and a week-old 
beard. His clothing, shabby and soiled, lay in a mal¬ 
odorous heap on the floor; and his eyes, red-rimmed and 
bleary, reflected a consternation that was no less palpable 
than the mayor’s. 

For a full moment the two held the pose of inarticulate 
amazement. 

“What—” McNicol gulped out at last. “Who the devil 
are you? What you doin’ in my bathtub?” 

The stranger displayed a winning, albeit toothless, 
smile. “W’y, gov’ner, the young lady she says t’ me, she 
says, ‘Wouldn’t y’ like a good dinner?’ An’ / says I would, 
very much. But she says, the young lady, ‘All right! 
But first you mus’ get yourself all clean.’ I didn’t ask 
her f’r no bath, gov’ner—she forced it on me, like.” 

“Who you talkin’ ’bout?” The owner of the bathroom 
was highly indignant by now. “What young lady?” 

“Why, the young lady of the house! Met me outside, 
an’ she was the one what begun the subject. I didn’t even 
ask her f’r no meal, I didn’t. An’ she says t’ me, she says, 


THE RED-BLOOD 


376 

‘After you had your bath, you better shave yourself, too. 
You’ll find a razor somewheres about, like enough.’ ” 
The stranger extended one arm plaintively, as if to indi¬ 
cate himself the innocent victim of another’s superior 
force. “So that’s how I come t’ be here, gov’ner.” 

McNicol stamped his foot. “You bum, you! Get outa 
that tub an’ into your clothes. An’ if you touch my razor, 
by God! I’ll have you sent up for ten years—hear? 
That’s a likely story, that is—some one invitin’ you into 
my house!” 

“Right enough, gov’ner.” 

The wrathful proprietor became conscious of an insist¬ 
ent knocking at the outer door of the suite. It was Mary, 
her thin, sensitive face a little flushed. 

“What is it, father? What’s the trouble?” 

He had an instant of comprehension. “You! D’you 
mean it was you-?” 

“Yes. You see, I met this unfortunate man out in front 
of the house, just as I was coming in, and he looked so 
forlorn, so wretched, I simply had to do something for 
him.” Her eyes were humid with compassion. “You 
weren’t here to ask, but I knew you wouldn’t mind.” 

In her time, Mary had committed many an exasperat¬ 
ing impudence in philanthropy’s sweet name. She was 
forever pestiferously interfering with the established 
order, forever spurring her depleted energy to fresh 
frantic assaults upon anything she deemed an injustice. 
Charity work was all very well for women, McNicol 
freely vouchsafed—a commendable enough thing for old 
maids to undertake; but why couldn’t Mary be decently 
conventional about it? Why couldn’t she be satisfied 
with the women’s organizations of the Methodist church, 
for example? But, no! She had to hurl herself headlong 
into the most unsavory and outlandish of crusades. 
Woman’s suffrage! Vegetarianism. Antivivisection. 



THE GOOD SCOUT 


377 


Much worse, into combating such time-proven necessities 
as licensed prostitution and the double standard of moral¬ 
ity. Perpetually she was invading the police courts and 
brazenly demanding that male fornicators be punished 
equally with female. And she had become even more 
shameless since her father’s elevation to office; she did 
not hesitate to trade upon his political power, when neces¬ 
sary. All in all she had embarrassed him without appar¬ 
ent compunction a hundred times. 

But she had never been guilty of anything quite so fan¬ 
tastic and offensive as this latest performance. And 
wdthal she had the hardihood to confront him unabashed 
—even to say, “I knew you wouldn’t mind!” 

“Y’ did, ay?” For an instant he wondered if she, like 
John, had turned imbecile. Then his exacerbation re¬ 
fused to be pent up longer. “So this is the kind of sneak 
work goes on in my own house while I’m gone!” It 
occurred to him that his precious razor had been inexplica¬ 
bly dull once or twice recently. “How often you been 
fetchin’ bums off the street into my bathroom?” 

“Oh—perhaps two or three times,” Mary revealed, 
conscientiously. 

“ ‘Perhaps two or three times,’ ay?” he parodied, and 
discharged an oath full into his daughter’s face. “You 
must be crazy! What you thinkin’ of, anyhow?” 

She received the onslaught with fortitude. “I’ll tell 
you what I’m thinking of—and what I believe. It’s not 
enough just to talk about helping the common people, 
about wanting to be their friend. No, if one is sincere, 
one practices what one preaches.” 

Her words themselves, and the marked significance with 
which she uttered them, penetrated unerringly to their 
intended mark. 

“You, you—!” 


McNicol choked. “Get that pick-up 


THE RED-BLOOD 


378 

of yours outa this house, d’ you hear? An’ if I ever catch 
you playin’ any more tricks like that, out you go, too!” 

It was noteworthy that Mary’s defensive powers had 
considerably increased within two years. There was but 
a faint trace, now, of that demeanor of fanatical martyr¬ 
dom with which she had once been accustomed to receive 
her father’s angry assaults. She seemed fully self-pos¬ 
sessed, even a little scornful. 

“Very well,” she answered, promptly. “Perhaps I’d 
better go at once.” 

She had him there, and she knew it. So did he; the 
fact jutted out like a rocky promontory from his receding 
wrath. He did not dare let her go—certainly not during 
the campaign. That issue had been fought out once be¬ 
fore, and settled for all time. He was beaten. 

Without another word, he donned the rest of his foren¬ 
sic attire and left the room. What could he have said, 
indeed? But the demonstration of his helplessness had 
only condensed his virulence by the process of bottling 
it up. 

“If things have got to a point where I can’t even keep 
tramps outa my own bathtub,” he fumed, “it’s about time 
for me to fire the whole bunch out on the street. Or else 
find another place to live, myself.” 

The infuriating part of it was he couldn’t do either: 
for an ambitious statesman must at all costs preserve at 
least the overt semblance of happy domesticity for the 
edification of a fickle electorate. He had to choose be¬ 
tween staying at home, swallowing the indignities that 
were his lot—and giving up his political career. 

As if to bring his smoldering discontent to a crest, 
Lessie now aopeared from the library and intercepted him 
at the carriage door. 

“Where you goin’, pa?” 



THE GOOD SCOUT 


379 

“Political meetin’.” McNicol swung open the door and 
strode down the steps toward the waiting carriage. 

A disapproving expression reached Lessie’s face; and 
she called out, regardless of the coachman: 

“Remember what you promised las’ night, pa, ’bout 
never touchin’ another drop of liquor!” 

IV 

As usual, he began to recover his spirits the moment he 
was out of sight of the Mausoleum; and by the time he 
reached the Brush Street depot he was almost the jovial 
politician once more. He swam off easily and confidently 
upon the afternoon’s adventure. 

He sat alone, quite bereft of the usual bodyguard of 
henchmen. Neither O’Brien nor Artemas Bigelow had 
been able to make the excursion with him; and he was 
just as w r ell pleased. Partly because he was in a mood 
that resented the mere thought of their officious sug¬ 
gestions. Partly because he wanted an undisturbed inter¬ 
val in which to plan his speech; by now he could make 
a very fair extemporaneous address, but the opportunity 
for special preparation was welcome. Lastly, because 
he was under the necessity of giving attention to other 
problems, the most pressing of wdiich, perhaps, related 
to Gayly O’Brien himself. The two year contract be¬ 
tween them would not expire until election day; but 
O’Brien naturally was anxious to learn whether or not 
it was to be renewed. Artemas Bigelow, as might have 
been expected, was urging a continuance of the relation¬ 
ship, but McNicol’s instincts were all averse to the pro¬ 
posal. Still, O’Brien was a likable young chap, and 
there Avas no denying that he had been both loyal and 
indefatigable. McNicol wanted to be fair. 

His self-satisfaction gathered momentum more rapidly 


THE RED-BLOOD 


380 

than the train itself. Soon he was able to achieve a tol¬ 
erant perspective even upon the domestic humiliations 
he had just undergone. He viewed himself as a victim 
of gross injustice, and all for the sake of his sacred duty 
to his fellow citizens. Suddenly there sauntered into his 
mind a sapient commentary he had once heard Artemas 
Bigelow propound: 

“If Abraham Lincoln had been congenially mated—if 
he had stayed at home at night, instead of being driven 
out to the refuge of the general store—he would never 
have learned to rub elbows with humanity; he would 
never have gone into politics. He might have been 
happier than he was, but he never in the world would 
have been President.” 

Never before had McNicol so fully realized the com¬ 
forting truth of this point of view. Never before had 
he applied it to his own case. He, like the Great 
Emancipator, had been virtually driven from his home 
and was finding solace in unselfish service to all man¬ 
kind. The thought engendered a sensuous melancholy, 
solaced him ineffably. 

“What luck!” a velvety voice presently intervened. 

McNicol was not particularly pleased to recognize Joe 
Cottrell, but he made room on the seat. 

“I saw you several minutes ago,” confessed the boss, 
“but I couldn’t tell whether you wanted company or 
not. You looked so lonesome and sad I honestly couldn’t 
help being reminded of President Lincoln.” 

“Funny,” the great man thawed, “I was jus’ thinkin’ 
of him.” It became apparent that Cottrell, whatever his 
shortcomings, was undeniably a shrewd judge of men. 
Instantly he had perceived the striking resemblance be¬ 
tween McNicol and the martyr President—a resemblance 
that quite eluded duller intelligences, like Bigelow’s, for 
example, and Gayly O’Brien’s. 


THE GOOD SCOUT 381 

Cottrell next made respectful inquiry regarding the 

mayor’s destination. 

“Nelson’s Point!” he ejaculated. “Why, that’s right 
near where I’m going! I must drive over and hear that 
speech of yours, sure!” Then with an affecting reverence 

in his voice, he added, “I’ll bring my mother with me, 

if she’s feeling better.” 

McNicol was immediately interested. “Goin’ up to see 
your mother, ay? She been sick?” 

The perfidious boss nodded dolefully. “Afraid she 
won’t live much longer. The best mother a man ever 
had, too.” A tear welled up over one eyelid and rolled 
down along his battered nose. 

“I know how you feel, Joe,” comforted McNicol. “I 
got a dear ol’ mother myself, who ain’t goin’ to be spared 
to me much longer.” His own tears could scarcely 
be held back. “Everything I’ve done, I—I owe to her.” 

“That’s the difference between us, Denny,” Cottrell 
choked. “Your mother has a right to be proud of her 
son. She’s sent a noble man into the world. But met 
Look at me, a common saloon keeper! My darling 
mother would die if she knew the truth. She thinks 
I’m a respectable business man.” He seized his com¬ 
panion’s hand in frantic appeal. “You won’t tell her, 
will you?” 

“Of course I won’t tell her. Don’t feel bad, Joe. It 
ain’t your fault. You’ve done the best you could.” 

“No, no! ” sobbed Cottrell. “I’m a bad son.” Suddenly 
he gave McNicol a direct, half-defiant look. “But what¬ 
ever you may think of me, I swear I never double- 
crossed you two years ago, like O’Brien claimed. As 
God is my judge, I played straight—but you never gave 
me a chance to explain.” 

“Sure you did, Joe!” The great man perceived he 
had unwittingly done a great injustice. “Gayly was lyin’. 


382 THE RED-BLOOD 

But that’s all past now, an’ we’re good friends again, 
ain’t we?” 

The other passengers in the car were considerably 
surprised to observe the uncommon spectacle of two 
apparently normal old gentlemen clutching at one an¬ 
other’s hands and weeping copiously. 

v 

After these thoroughly rapturous throes of reconcilia¬ 
tion, the Labor Day celebration might well have proven 
tame sport. In point of fact, however, it afforded McNicol 
one of the great triumphs of his career. 

Nelson’s Point was a small village north of Port Huron, 
in what is commonly known as “the Thumb” of Michi¬ 
gan’s odd, mitten-shaped shore line. It was after three 
o’clock when the train reached the forlorn little station; 
and Chairman Tompkins, who met the honored guest and 
drove him the two miles that lay between the town and 
the beach of Lake Huron, explained that the afternoon’s 
program was already under way. 

“They’re playin’ the ball game now between Nelson’s 
Point an’ Cresswell. Next comes your address, and then 
the life-savin’ drill.” 

Even the buggy ride was a profitable experience. 
Chairman Tompkins, it developed, was something of a 
political personage himself; he had served many terms 
as justice of the peace; and now he was an influential 
member of the Reoublican County Committee. 

“What nationality are your voters?” inquired the dis¬ 
tinguished visitor. 

“Oh, Americans mostly; some Germans.” 

“Any Irish?” 

“Nope,” avowed his conductor. “Don’t find many 
Irish doin’ farm work.” 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


383 

McNicol made a mental note to use only Irish and 
Jewish anecdotes. He was a little sorry, for he deemed 
himself most successful in German dialect stories. 

They reached the picnic grounds in the nick of time, 
for the baseball game had just broken up in a heated 
altercation over one of the umpire’s outrageous decisions 
in favor of the Cresswell team. The throngs were al¬ 
ready gravitating toward the spacious lawn of the coast¬ 
guard station, where the remaining exercises were to be 
held. 

McNicol debouched from his host’s buggy and spent 
the next ten minutes in shaking hands with the other 
members of the committee of the day. By now he 
was an adept at the business; he could shake hands, if 
need be, with hundreds of people, shedding their muscu¬ 
lar clasps along his fingers in a way that protected his 
hand, yet convincing each man, woman, and child that 
he had waited all his life for that particular contact. 

Then a local band struck up “Kail to the Chief,” and 
though long since, this martial melody had ceased to 
do aught but grate drearily on his ears, he mounted the 
flag-bedizened platform with a smile that betrayed only 
profound gratification and profounder gratitude. 

Chairman Tompkins w T as saying: 

“I’m sure, ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want t’ 
hear no speech from me. You can hear me toot my own 
horn any day in the week.” (Laughter and applause.) 
“Therefore I will not detain you. It gives me great 
pleasure t’ introduce the speaker of the afternoon, who 
we was fortunate enough t’ obtain at the very las’ minute 
—that st.erlin’ patriot an’ friend of the people, Detroit’s 
famous war mayor—the Hon. William McNicol.” 

William! Two short years ago the great man would 
have been deeply embittered; but now the error well-nigh 
escaped him. He advanced into the tumult of applause 


THE RED-BLOOD 


384 

as a veteran soldier into musketry. No longer was he an 
apprehensive apprentice, at a loss for words and gestures; 
but instead, an accomplished mob shouter. 

“Fellow citizens!” 

Yes, the introductory phrase was precisely the one 
he had employed twenty months ago in his inaugural 
address. The band’s “Hail to the Chief” was the same. 
But he was a changed McNicol—and in aspects more far- 
reaching that the mere capacity to stand before vast 
crowds without self-consciousness. It was the alteration 
in his viewpoint toward his listeners that was most signifi¬ 
cant, perhaps. Then, he had earnestly sought to lead the 
people, to implant noble ideas in them, to instruct and 
uplift them. Now, though he still insisted to himself 
that his mission was a high and sacred one, he had con¬ 
ceived a new and cynical attitude toward the rabble. 

Yes, he knew what the commonalty was like now. He 
knew that this horde in front of him had come hither this 
afternoon not to be preached to, not to be enlightened, not 
to be treated as serious and intelligent persons—but to 
be amused, to be shocked out of the dismal coma that was 
their daily existence, to be dazzled. To gape at greatness. 
And though he could still assure himself he meant to bet¬ 
ter the lot of these masses—that this, in fact, was his sole 
motive in seeking authority—he was now amply con¬ 
vinced of the necessity, nay, the pious duty, of cajoling 
and wheedling his inferiors; of making them impossible 
promises, then distracting them by yet other promises. 
In brief, of using any means to perpetuate himself in 
power. If somebody had to fool the voters, it was far 
better obviously that he, McNicol, with his benevolent 
intentions, should be the one, instead of some scoundrel 
with no ideals at all. 

And because he no longer was handicapped by illusions 
as to what his audience wanted, because he knew pre- 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


385 

cisely what commodities to purvey, his speech this after¬ 
noon was highly successful. No great orator, admittedly, 
he had nevertheless acquired the knack of mixing sure-fire 
emotional ingredients together with a touch fairly deft. 
Humor, pathos, patriotism—that was the formula. Irish 
jokes, alternating with frequent solemn reassurances to 
his auditors that they were the glorious foundation stones 
of the greatest country in the world, the greatest state in 
the Union. A timely reference to the iniquity of all 
Spaniards; a moving tribute to the boys in blue, who 
could have vanquished the other nations of Europe, in 
addition, without half trying. Nothing original, of course; 
for originality was apt to be dangerous. Safe plati¬ 
tudes —cliches he had used a score of times before, always 
effectively. 

But it was in his pronouncements about the hand that 
rocks the cradle that McNicol reached his apex of 
eloquence. American womanhood, he intimated, was the 
sole repository of feminine virtue, beauty, and nobility. 
When he told the fatigued mothers in his audience that 
they were the pillars of the nation and the hope of its 
future, he was forced to stop a moment and wipe the tears 
from his eyes. Sincere tears they were: the recollection 
of the recent poignant episode on the train was still strong 
upon him. He was sorry that Joe Cottrell and his old 
mother were not there to hear him. 

Then another impassioned apostrophe to the great flag 
that fluttered aloft, and his hour’s address was at an end. 
The crowd’s enthusiasm was stupendous, colossal. He 
had done his work well. 

“The fines’ speech I ever listened to,” congratulated 
Chairman Tompkins. 

McNicol rose and bowed a number of times. He re¬ 
gretted a little that he could not leave the scene at once, 
before the oration’s effect had spent itself. The idea of 


THE RED-BLOOD 


386 

becoming a mere passive spectator during the balance 
of the program did not appeal to his sense of fitness. 

Yet even to the end a benignant fortune conspired to 
keep the spotlight full upon him. 

The life-saving drill consisted chiefly of an imaginary 
rescue of shipwrecked sailors. At the far end of the 
inclosure stood a dummy mast and yard; over this con¬ 
trivance a line was shot, and presently a breeches buoy 
rattled out and took off the pseudo-mariners in distress. 

McNicol, viewing this spectacle somewhat languidly 
from the speakers’ platform, suddenly heard his name 
called out. The captain of the coast-guard crew was 
directing a megaphone toward him. 

“Would you like t’ be rescued, Mr. Mayor?” 

No, Mr. Mayor did not care at all for the idea; yet 
instantly—such was his present political acumen—he 
nodded his head and pushed his way through the crowd 
toward the coast-guard captain. Already the proposal 
had caught the popular fancy. There were cheers. 

The captain seemed surprised. “I was only jokin’. 
Don’t do it unless y’ want t’.” 

But McNicol, in full view of the multitude, threw off 
his coat with a reckless come-what-may gesture that 
brought an access of applause, strode to the dummy mast, 
climbed it, swung himself into the breeches buoy—not 
an easy thing to do—and to the accompaniment of vocifer¬ 
ous approving hilarity was pulled toward a mythical shore. 
To add even greater savor to the episode, he kicked his 
legs wildly throughout his aerial journey. 

As he disengaged himself from the apparatus, smiling 
as if he had keenly relished the experience, a man with a 
camera addressed him. 

“I want a picture of that for the Detroit papers. Would 
you mind doing it again?” 

The manner in which McNicol acquiesced to this un- 


THE GOOD SCOUT 


387 

reasonable request proved how much he had learned in 
two years. He did not follow his first indignant instinct 
and bellow: “What do I care ’bout what you and the 
Detroit papers want? I’m not a-goin’ through that silly 
business again. Why wasn’t you ready the first time?” 
No, he bowed amiably to the demands of the press, re¬ 
turned to the dummy mast once more, and a second time 
was rescued, gesticulating even more frantically for the 
photographer. 

To the uninitiate, it may perhaps seem that these were 
undignified, even cheap, maneuverings—antics unworthy 
of a Great Man. But the soundness of McNicol’s political 
intuition was fully vindicated by a remark which he 
chanced to overhear from one of the crowd, and which 
in a way—to him, at least—afforded the most pleasing 
tribute of the afternoon’s celebration. 

“Say,” the voice announced with a chuckle that was 
not lacking in respect. “Say—that fellow McNicol’s a 
good scout, ain’t he? A real good scout!” 

Than this, homage can go no further. 


CHAPTER II 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


I 


HE afternoon before election day, McNicol paid 



A what was intended to be a flying visit to his office 
in the City Hall. 

He was in an impatient mood as he let himself in 
through the private entrance; for to-day was the busiest 
of the year for him. He had just come from two factory 
meetings, and he must hurry on to other similar engage¬ 
ments. To-night, after addressing a half dozen smaller 
gatherings, he purposed ending the campaign at a mon¬ 
ster rally of Republican workers at the Light Infantry 
Armory. 

“I got no time for small change now,” he muttered to 
himself. 

The appointment had been arranged by Gayly 
O’Brien—a circumstance that did not diminish McNicol’s 
animosity. Yet when he appeared at the open door be¬ 
tween his private room and the outer office he smiled 
benignantly upon the little group of persons waiting 
for him. 

“Come right in,” he urged, with professional sunni¬ 
ness. 

There were four adults and one infant-in-arms in the 
party. The hapless infant it was who had unconsciously 
supplied the provocation for the affair by permitting him¬ 
self to be christened: “Wellington Dennison McNicol 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


389 

Simpers.” In addition to young Master Simpers, there 
were his mother, somewhat scared by all this sudden 
prominence; the Globe photographer; the young woman 
reporter who was to write the feature story for the same 
paper; and lastly, another woman of about thirty, rather 
arresting in appearance and much more dashingly dressed 
than Mrs. Simpers. Her connection with the enterprise 
was not explained, but McNicol assumed she was his 
namesake’s aunt. 

The ceremony was brief, and not so unpleasant after 
all. He was careful to stand at the right of Mrs. Simpers, 
because he had long since discovered that the right side 
of his face photographed much more satisfactorily than 
the left. It was a source of regret, however, that he could 
not appropriately wear his hat in the picture; for his 
increasing baldness seemed incongruous with the Lincoln 
beard he had been sedulously cultivating during the past 
two months. Mrs. Simpers bashfully took her station next 
him, in front of the camera, and handed over the pro¬ 
testing infant. 

McNicol was surprised to find himself thrilled by the 
simple process of holding a baby in his arms. He had 
quite forgotten his liking for very young children; it gave 
him naive pleasure to be able to allay Master Simpers’s 
fright at the ordeal of the flashlight. 

“Raised four of ’em myself,” he explained to the 
reporter. “Guess I ain’t forgot how.” And all at once 
he was racked by the passionate wish that his own chil¬ 
dren might by some miracle be transformed into little 
babies once more. 

Next he presented his namesake with a ten-dollar 
gold piece. 

“By the time he has grown up,” he charged the mother, 
“I may no longer be here-” 

The woman reporter was a flip young thing. “Of course 



390 THE RED-BLOOD 

you will!” she interrupted, cheerfully. “You’ll live to be 
eighty.” 

“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout how long I’m a-goin’ to live,” he 
responded with asperity. “I mean I may not be here 
in Detroit.” 

The young woman made a truly admirable recovery. 
“That’s so. More likely in the White House.” 

“Oh no,” McNicol deprecated, though he flushed with 
pleasure. “I ain’t won this election yet.” Then he re¬ 
verted to Mrs. Simpers. “When the boy grows up, hand 
him that gold piece and tell him who gave it to him. Tell 
him this motto from me: ‘Work hard, be good to your 
mother, keep away from strong drink, save money—and 
some day you’ll be a Great Man, too.’ ” 

Deeply affected by the sound advice, the visitors 
departed. 

When he heard the outer door slam shut, he turned 
toward his desk instinctively, pulled out the lower drawer, 
and drew forth his bottle of whisky. He was very tired, 
he discovered, and required fortification for the exhaust¬ 
ing demands of the balance of the afternoon. 

As he tilted his head back, however, he became aware 
that the unidentified, stylishly dressed woman was stand¬ 
ing in the doorway, surveying him with a curious com¬ 
bination of amusement and pretended inadvertence on her 
handsome face. 

“I beg your pardon,” she hazarded. It was the first 
time she had spoken; her voice was low pitched and 
agreeable, with an indefinable caressing quality that 
might have been partly artificial. But she did not offer 
to retire; there was about her, indeed, a certain unmis¬ 
takable assuredness. 

“What d’ you want?” McNicol was embarrassed as 
well as annoyed. He set the bottle down on the desk, 
because he realized that an attempt at concealment would 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


39 i 


only make him more ridiculous. Nevertheless, he made 
the tactical error of explaining: “There’s times when a 
man needs a stimulant. I don’t often-” 

There was a world of gracious sympathy in her nod as 
she came toward the desk and helped herself to a chair. 

“Please don’t stop on my account.” 

Still he eyed her uneasily, the thought visiting him that 
she might be a reporter from some hostile newspaper. 

“Wasn’t you with those other people?” 

The woman laughed impenitently, but placatingly. Her 
teeth were fine and very white. Her mirth also called 
McNicol’s attention to the fact of physical opulence: she 
was not fat or in any way misshapen, but her face was 
extremely full and her figure mature and billowy. She 
was a brunette; her eyes were large but not languorous; 
the brows above, regular and well chiseled. Her nose was 
straight, her mouth not unrestrained in its softness; the 
round cheeks so colorful that even the inexperienced 
McNicol suspected the touch of rouge. He caught, too, 
the emanation of perfumery. 

“Yes, I was with them, all right, but I didn’t belong,” 
she explained. “You see, I had to talk to you, so when 
I found out what was going to happen I just joined the 
party, d’ you understand? Anything to get in and tell 
you my troubles.” 

McNicol was slightly reassured “All right, but re¬ 
member my time is short.” He glanced at his watch. 

“Well, Your Honor, I’ve come to ask you if you won’t 
give me a job as stenographer.” 

The revelation caught him unprepared. The woman 
did not look like a stenographer; as he would have put it, 
she was too “dressy.” 

“You mean—to work!” 

She nodded, bravely repelling incipient tears. “I used 



392 THE RED-BLOOD 

to be a stenographer before I got married. My hus¬ 
band-” 

“Dead, ma’am?” 

“Oh, I’m afraid so, Your Honor. He enlisted for the 
war last spring, and—well, he hasn’t come back.” 

At this precise instant McNicol’s ready sympathy was 
broken into by the sound of a key in the private door; 
then Artemas Bigelow, who alone with Gayly O’Brien pos¬ 
sessed the right of entree through this door, stepped into 
the room. 

The woman merely twisted around at the intrusion, 
but McNicol sprang to his feet with what must have 
appeared to be a guilty apprehensiveness. 

“Oh, it’s—it’s you!” he faltered. “Jus’ set down a 
minute.” 

Bigelow’s astounded eyes took in the scene at a glance. 
“No, no,” he demurred, with an insinuating smile. “I’ll 
wait outside.” 

Curbing horrible oaths of annoyance at the mischance, 
the mayor resumed his seat. 

“I’m afraid—” began the woman, propitiatingly. 

“Oh no—just my attorney. Now let’s see. I regret 
to say there ain’t no opening here for a stenographer.” 

Her eyes filled with tears of distress. “I’m so dis¬ 
appointed! I wouldn’t have bothered you, only you have 
such a reputation for being generous.” 

McNicol softened. “You have my sympathy, ma’am, 
in your great misfortune. The wife of a soldier who has 
given his life’s blood for his country is entitled to first 
chance. Though there ain’t no opening here right now, 
there might be some time. S’posin’ you leave me your 
name and address.” He picked up his pencil. 

Again she bravely mastered her grief. “It’s Irma 
Evans, Your Honor.” She lived in a small apartment on 



THE GAY GOSSOON 


393 

High Street, not far from the Mayor’s first home, and 
she could be reached by telephone. 

“Til tell you,” McNicol resumed. “I’ll keep your name 
on file, and even if there ain’t no vacancy here, I’m likely 
to hear of some other position.” He deposited the memo¬ 
randum in an upper drawer. 

Mrs. Evans’s gratitude became vaguely tinged by mis¬ 
givings. “How good you are to me! But I’d ever so 
much rather work for you than anybody else.” She arose 
reluctantly, as if to leave. 

To conceal his confusion at this direct tribute to his 
attractive qualities, he coughed. “By the way, have you 
got any references, or are you jus’ startin’ in to work 
again?” 

“No, I left a position last week,” she divulged, hesi¬ 
tantly; then, to forestall his retrieval of the memorandum, 
she added: “But please don’t inquire about me there. 
You see—well, to tell the truth, I had to leave the place 
because my employer—because my employer’s conduct 
toward me was—well, improper.” 

She looked so unhappy that all McNicol’s chivalry 
leaped up. “What’s his name? I’ll see he’s punished 
good and sufficient for insultin’ a soldier’s wife!” 

She debated the question. “No, I don’t think I ought 
to tell you—though he deserves it, the ugly little cur!” 
Then her manner changed, she looked straight at McNicol, 
and said, softly, “Of course, it might be different with 
you.” 

He was utterly, pitifully stunned, as if his comely 
visitor had unexpectedly seized the whisky bottle and 
struck him over the head. The impact was to all intents 
and purposes physical. Then slowly, as the fair inference 
of her words burrowed into his brain, his mouth dropped 
open and his cheeks began to burn. He stared incredu¬ 
lously. 


394 


THE RED-BLOOD 


Irma Evans had not flushed—that was the puzzling 
part of it—nor was her demeanor that of the traditional 
siren. It seemed altogether impossible that she could be 
aware of the significance of her words. Certainly there 
was nothing more than appealing gratitude in the warm 
gaze she maintained upon him. 

But now her eyes fell diffidently, as if perhaps it had 
come home to her that her impulsive affection for her 
patron had carried her too far. 

“Thank you so much for your kindness. I’ll hope to 
hear from you.” 

With one final daring glance of intimate approval, she 
was gone. 

But McNicol remained cataleptically rigid. His first 
definite emotion was one of ingenuous masculine pride. 
A handsome woman had come into the office on a business 
errand and been instantly enthralled by him. The thing 
was indefensible, of course, yet how could he blame her 
much? His second reaction, however, was an intense 
anger—not so much because of the implied immorality of 
this widow’s proposal, but rather because it was she who 
had taken the initiative. The male in him was obscurely 
affronted; man should be the aggressor in such affairs, 
woman coyly elusive. 

“You strumpet!” he execrated. “Approachin’ me with 
any such proposition. A good thing for you you cleared 
out just when you did! ” 

Presently there came a discreet knocking at the private 
door. 

“Come in!” He had quite forgotten about Bigelow; 
he would, in truth, have paid a hundred dollars to escape 
the forthcoming colloquy. 

The attorney’s spherical head projected itself cau¬ 
tiously through the entrance way. 

“Coast clear?” 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


395 


“Of course, you fool!” 

“Steady! Steady! How should I know what you were 
up to?” 

“Wa’n't up to nothin’!” said the Great Man, crossly. 
“Soldier’s widow lookin’ for work. Just a business inter¬ 
view.” 

“I dare say. Of course! That accounts for the 
Scotch.” Bigelow leered at the bottle on the mayoral 
desk. “Oh, my boy—to think of how you’ve been fooling 
me all these years! Exactly like you to keep it dark. 
Come on now—who is she?” 

“You’ll have to excuse me. I got to go now.” McNicol 
looked at his watch and rose with dignity. There was no 
use protesting his innocence to a fellow with Bigelow’s 
evil mind. “Fifteen minutes late already.” 

“All right, all right—if you want to be a clam. I just 
dropped in to see what you’d decided to do about Gayly’s 
contract.” 

“Talk ’bout that after election.” 

Bigelow shook his head. “I’m leaving town to-night 
for a week.” 

“Well, then,” the mayor revealed, curtly, “I ain’t a-goin’ 
to renew O’Brien’s contract—see? No good to me any 
more. In fact, I been payin’ him a high salary for two 
years and not gettin’ a thing for my money. But jus’ to 
prove I’m a good sport, I’m a-goin’ to give him a job out 
at the plant—not a five-thousand-dollar job, mind you, 
but a good one at that, where he’ll have a chance for 
promotion.” 

“I’m sorry to hear it.” The lawyer’s expression, so 
waggish a moment ago, fell away to melancholy. “Sure 
you’re not making a mistake to ditch him in favor of 
loe Cottrell?” 

McNicol moved restively toward the door. “You bet 
I’m sure. And now I got to skip along.” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


396 

“Well—” There came a resilient rebound to jocularity 
in Bigelow’s intonation. “Hadn’t you better stow that 
bottle first?” And when his friend irately returned to the 
desk, he added: “Tell you what, Mac. We’re both tired 
out. You better come along with me.” 

“Where you goin’?” 

“Chicago. Me and Katerina-” 

“Chicago!” The name always brought an infelicitous 
recollection of his half-witted son. 

Bigelow nodded. “Wire Arnold Desmond—that’s my 
Chicago name!—at the Bremen Hotel if you ’ll come. 
Katerina and I will provide you a suitable partner.” 

“No, thank you!” The great man approached the 
door. “I’ll have no traffic with that sort of sinful 
goin’s-on.” 

“Oh, sin’s all right. Necessary to wisdom.” Bigelow 
chuckled. “Only don’t go playing around with some lady 
you don’t know anything about. Don’t trifle with soldiers’ 
widows. I say—will you do it? Glad to fix it up for you. 
To-morrow night, eh?” 

McNicol indignantly brushed the offer aside and 
plunged once more into the round of speechmaking. Yet 
the suggestion somehow clung; and toward midnight, 
in the midst of his impassioned harangue to his followers 
at the Light Infantry Armory, he was overtaken by an 
abrupt and astonishingly vivid picture of Irma Evans 
surveying him ardently, her lips moving to words of 
unequivocal invitation. 


11 

The knocking persisted inconsiderately, and McNicol 
finally grunted out a drowsy response. Then he felt a 
hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes upon Beatrice. 
It must have been late in the forenoon, for she was fully 
dressed, and there was no sign of Lessie in the bedroom. 



THE GAY GOSSOON 


397 


“Wha—what’s the matter?” 

Frowningly she handed him one of the two slips of 
paper she had brought. 

“These telegrams were just telephoned from your 
office,” she explained. “Lucky I happened to be the one 
to get them.” 

His eyes still smarted a little from the tobacco smoke 
of last night’s political rallies, but he read the message 
anxiously. 

Nelson's Point, Mich., Nov. 3, 1898. 

Best wishes from Nelson’s Point Republicans. We predict 
your reelection by overwhelming majority. Now for nineteen 
hundred and the Governorship. 

W. P. Tompkins, Chairman. 

His displeasure was accentuated by a sudden sense of 
physical nausea. 

“Didn’t you know no better ’n to wake me up on 
accounta this here?” 

Bee, ordinarily, was not one to absorb such outbursts 
meekly; but on this occasion she seemed preoccupied 
with more serious matters. 

“That’s not all.” 

He eyed the second telegram. 

“No,” she withheld. “There’s something I must ex¬ 
plain first.” 

“Jus’ wait a minute, then.” His stomach’s discomfort 
could be ignored no longer. That was one of the dis¬ 
advantages of being a Great Man: the necessity of gulp¬ 
ing down wholesale quantities of strong drink pro bono 
publico every day—especially during campaigns—carried 
with it extremely distressing after-effects. 

After he had had recourse to the box of soda tablets in 
his coat pocket, however, he felt a little less ill. 

“Well, what is it?” 


THE RED-BLOOD 


398 

“I was going to tell you this part to-day, anyway,” said 
Beatrice. a I’ve promised to marry Harrison Pitkins, 
junior. The announcement is to be made in Sunday’s 
papers.” 

He was surprised and at first disgruntled. 

“When’d that happen?” 

“Oh, last summer while I was visiting the family in 
Massachusetts. At least it started then, but Harrison 
didn’t speak to his father about it till last week.” 

It occurred to McNicol as unseemly that the sanction 
of Pitkins, senior, was considered vital, while his own was 
taken for granted. 

“Well, what do I know about young Pitkins? Haven’t 
heard him askin’ my consent, I haven’t.” 

“Don’t be silly, papa!” But, noting that he was 
offended, she quickly placated: “No, I don’t mean silly— 
but you see, that’s an old-fashioned idea, asking the 
father’s consent. Nowadays, young people marry whom 
they like. Only the Pitkins crowd are frightfully snob¬ 
bish, so I had to work them very carefully. Of course,” 
she added, “I’ll have Harrison come in to see you. I knew 
you’d approve, anyway.” 

His annoyance receded somewhat as he began to per¬ 
ceive the larger phases of the situation. That Beatrice 
should be betrothed was in itself an event of magnitude, 
irrespective of the identity of her fiance; but that she 
should be marrying into one of the great aristocratic 
families of the city—what a feather in her cap! What a 
personal triumph over the Mausoleum’s varied handicaps! 
He could not but be proud of her. 

“When’s it goin’ to come off?” 

“Next June.” Bee appeared not at all excited. 

“Well, well.” Though he did not definitely realize the 
fact, he was relieved, too: for more than once, of late 
years, he had been not a little apprehensive about his 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


399 


younger daughter’s future; she was headstrong, she v^as 
impulsive; she might easily make a botch of her life by 
marrying some worthless bounder, some good-looking 
Evanturel. Vaguely, she sometimes reminded him of her 
Aunt Jenny—the beautiful, the foolish: there was, to 
be sure, a certain strain of self-seeking calculation in 
Beatrice that Jenny had never possessed; yet the two 
women—one a forlorn fragment of life’s scrap heap, the 
other young, vivid and enchanting—were nevertheless 
remotely akin. 

But now this worry, at least, need no longer harass him; 
and though a sharp pang cut through his heart at the 
thought of losing her, he could not deny that the news 
made him happy. 

“Well, well,” he repeated. “And I s’pose your beau’s 
a fine young spark, ay?” 

Even at that Beatrice remained curiously distrait. 

“Oh yes, he’s all right. No Adonis when it comes to 
looks. Nothing to satisfy one’s dream of romance.” She 
made the strange admission almost wistfully. “But I 
fancy there’ll be a number of mamas sadly disappointed 
next Sunday. Harrison’s perfectly all right, too, in his 
way, only—” She broke off half impatiently, as if dis¬ 
pleased to find herself encumbered with vain, nebulous 
longings—then handed her father the second telegram. 

Chicago, III., Nov. 3, 1898. 

Regret to inform you your son found dead this morning. 
Fell out of his window some time during night while asleep 
apparently. Wire disposition desired. 

1 

The message had been signed by the superintendent of 
the “home.” 

“John . . . dead!” 

Yet he had known for weeks that this would happen, 
that one day some one would give him this telegram. In 



400 


THE RED-BLOOD 


a flash he seemed to pierce through the explanation— 
“Fell . . . while asleep apparently”—to the ugly truth. 
The tear-blotted phrase in his son’s last letter focused 
itself sharply on the retina of his eye: “I swear I will 
take my own life rather than spend it here in this hell¬ 
hole.” 

For an instant he was at the mercy of a flux of grief 
and bitter self-crimination. Then the instinct of justifica¬ 
tion, always so strong in him, began to operate: he had 
done nothing wrong; the tragedy wasn’t his fault. It 
was, in fact, a blessing that John had died—far better a 
sudden painless cutting-off than the long slope of count¬ 
less crepuscular years. A great burden seemed to slip 
from McNicol’s shoulders. 

Then he thought of what the newspapers might print 
about the accident—on this, election day! 

Beatrice’s intent eyes bored through his preoccupation. 
“Too bad—yet it’s really a mercy.” 

“Why didn’t you give me this message first?” he 
demanded. 

“Because it concerns me and my plans,” she retorted 
at once without hint of self-reproach. “I had to tell you 
about my engagement first.” 

“I don’t see-” 

“You don’t! Listen, papa—John’s death must be kept 
absolutely quiet. If it gets out—if there’s anything in the 
papers about it—all my plans will be spoiled and I can’t 
announce my engagement this week.” 

Her petulant callousness smote him. “What’s the harm 
in puttin’ it off a bit?” 

“Because it can’t be put off, that’s all.” Bee’s insist¬ 
ence approached hysteria. “In the first place, I’ve already 
mailed the announcement to the papers. In the second 
place, if the Pitkins tribe ever found out I had a brother 



THE GAY GOSSOON 401 

who was crazy, you can just bet they’d call the thing off 
in a jiffy.” 

“Well, what of it? They ain’t the only pebbles on the 
beach, I guess. And, anyway, they don’t need know what 
was wrong with John.” 

“Don't? If people find out about it at all, they’ll know 
it happened at a sanitarium, won’t they? And then the 
whole nasty mess will come out. Wouldn’t help you much, 
either, I can tell you.” She clenched her small fists and 
stamped fiercely on the carpet. “No, no, no! You’ve 
simply got to hush it up. I’ve had a hard enough time 
getting anywhere, as it is—making excuses from morning 
to night so as not to have people come here. Why, any 
other girl would have a reception or a dance at her home 
to announce her engagement, but / can’t, can I? I have 
to make up some lie to explain why I don’t have a recep¬ 
tion too. / have to get along with a plain announcement 
in the Sunday papers.” She was sobbing angrily. “And 
now this has to happen—at just the worst possible 
time!” 

Thus it came to pass that McNicol, after dispatching 
an admonitory telegram to the superintendent, did take 
the train to Chicago that night, after all—but to keep a 
somewhat different rendezvous than that urged by Arte- 
mas Bigelow. Next morning, he ascertained that he had 
been reelected by a majority of over twenty thousand; 
and mingling discrepantly with his remorse, there devel¬ 
oped in his mind a very definite sense of personal injury, 
not unlike Beatrice’s, that the catastrophe should have 
occurred at precisely the moment to vitiate his second 
enormous triumph at the hands of his fellow citizens. 

Thus it came to pass, also, that John’s unhappy clay 
was hurriedly, furtively, shunted off to an obscure Chicago 
cemetery—a well-deserved rebuke to him for having been 
inconsiderate enough to die at an inconvenient time. 


402 


THE RED-BLOOD 


hi 

One of the first to offer congratulations, after McNicoI’s 
return to his office two mornings later, was Phil Morgan, 
the bland, pink-cheeked political agent for the street- 
railway company. 

“We’re on different sides of the fence,” he said, “but 
that fact don’t keep me from recognizing a great man when 
I see one. If you don’t end up in Washington, I miss 
my guess.” 

“It’s my friends deserves the credit,” the mayor dis¬ 
counted, modestly. 

“Yes, friends are all right; but what I always say is, 
the real glory goes to a man’s mother. You must have 
had a good one.” 

“The finest old mother in the w T orld, Phil—and still 
livin’.” He felt greatly drawn to Morgan, all at once. It 
had not struck him as slightly peculiar that since his 
Labor Day talk with Joe Cottrell a considerable number 
of his associates had begun to make tearful references to 
their respective mothers. 

“Well then, you’re lucky,” bespoke the railway emis¬ 
sary, with great emotion. “I wish t’ God mine was!” 
After an interval of silent communion he went on: “Yes, 
Your Honor, I predict splendid achievements for your 
second term. You’ve already done a lot; but, after all, 
it takes a man one term in office to really learn the iob, 
to get the hang of the ropes. . . . Now, please don’t think 
I’m taking advantage of a friendly talk to say I hope, and 
the company hopes, that one of the things you’ll tackle 
will be a fair settlement of the street-car question.” 

“What you mean?” 

“Oh, you know how it’s been in this town for the last 
ten years. Every political pirate attackin’ the company 
just to draw votes, but not one of ’em honestly wanting 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


403 


to do anything about it. The people are getting sick of 
the mess, and I’ll say to you in confidence, the company 
is, too. There’s no doubt at all that everybody wants 
some reasonable solution of the quarrel.” 

“Yes, but looka here!” McNicol objected, naively. “If 
the street-car question’s settled, what issue would we have 
left?” 

Morgan retained his gravity. “That’s all very well for 
the cheap politicians to worry about; but a real statesman 
—like yourself, if I may say so—don’t need that kind of 
horse-play. Besides, this will be your last whack at 
municipal politics. Two years from now you’ll be in the 
Governor’s chair. Don’t you see—it’s a real chance for 
you to do something constructive for the city, without ref¬ 
erence to politics?” 

The argument was plausible, but the mayor discovered 
himself instinctively hostile. “Besides, Phil, how could I 
settle with you? I been talkin’ municipal ownership to 
the voters, you know that. I can’t give you no franchise.” 

“That’s all right. We’d make it a part of the agree¬ 
ment that the city could buy us out any time it wanted to. 
Look here, Mac: You’re a first-class business man; then 
why not settle this mess on a business basis? If you’d 
leave politics out, the whole thing could be fixed up over a 
lunch table. You want to do something for the people, 
don’t you—something that will be a permanent monument 
to you? Understand, I don’t ask you to take my say-so 
alone. Talk it over with your advisers. Ask Bigelow.” 

The suggestion was not entirely a felicitous one. “I’m 
makin’ up my own mind, from now on,” the people’s 
champion set forth, with palpable asperity. 

Morgan discerned that he had said enough, and arose 
to go. “Of course you are! Well, think it over. No 
hurry.” 

The next caller, it so happened, was Gayly O’Brien; 



404 


THE RED-BLOOD 


and it was noteworthy that he entered from the outer office 
instead of through the private doorway. 

McNicol, indeed, remarked upon the circumstance. 

“My contract expired on election day,” explained the 
erstwhile campaign manager, “and with it my license to 
intrude without warning, I suppose. In fact, I’ve come 
to turn in my key.” 

The mayor was relieved to be spared the necessity of 
terminating the relationship, but he was perplexed as well. 
“What makes you think I ain’t a-goin’ to renew your 
contract?” 

“It’s been quite apparent for some time, Chief,” Gayly 
said, quite without animosity. “You want to paddle your 
own canoe, which is perfectly natural. We’re still damn’ 
good friends; and if there’s anything I can ever do for 
you, I’ll be tickled to death.” 

Curiosity spread in McNicol; he had expected no such 
casual leave-taking. He purposed being generous, never¬ 
theless. 

“You’ll be wantin’ another job, I reckon,” he said, “and 
just to show you I appreciate your services, I’m a-goin’ 
to get you a position out at the plant.” 

O’Brien shook his long narrow head decisively. 
“Thanks just the same, but I’m already fixed.” 

“You are? Not a-goin’ to stay in politics?” 

“No. I like the game, but there’s no future in it. I’m 
going into business—the fact is, with your son.” 

“Arthur!” 

“Yes, Chief.” 

McNicol felt grossly affronted, even betrayed. Any one 
who countenanced his impenitent son became ipso facto 
an enemy. For Arthur had not come near the Mausoleum, 
had not yet made the slightest overtures toward a recon¬ 
ciliation. Lessie had seen him a number of times, but 
always at the hotel. McNicol had been too proud to ask 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


405 


questions; he had no notion of what his son might be up to. 

“Well, it’s none of my affairs,” he disparaged, “but ITi 
say this: I got nothin’ to do with my son; I take no re¬ 
sponsibility for his actions. I warn you, he’s a good-for- 
nothin’ loafer, and if you have anything to do with him, 
you’ll come to grief.” 

O’Brien smiled cheerfully. “Oh no, I guess not. 
Arthur’s a smart chap and he’s picked up some good back¬ 
ing. Perhaps you don’t know it, but we’re going into the 
pharmaceutical business. Going to be competitors of 
yours.” 

McNicol sat motionless and inarticulate. 

“Well, good-by, Chief, and good luck!” O’Brien 
flushed a little when his outstretched hand was ignored, 
but quickly recovered. “Oh, yes—here’s the key.” 

It was some moments before the mayor could manage 
to discharge his venom even into unspoken words. 

“I mighta known it. Jus’ like a Mick. A damn’ good 
riddance—and by God! I’ll smash the both of ’em!” 

He picked up the key to the private door, and an hour 
or two later presented it to Joe Cottrell. 

IV 

Along toward the close of afternoon there came a sur¬ 
cease of affairs of state, and McNicol leaned back in his 
swivel chair wearily. 

Ever since the visit of Gayly O’Brien that morning he 
had continued in a morose frame of mind. Now, unfore- 
seeably, he was bored. A Great Man—yes, but bored. 

His secretary brought in the day’s final mail, and he 
glanced at it languidly. The first letter was from a 
tobacco merchant requesting gracious permission to label 
his latest product: “The W. D. McNicol Five-cent Cigar.” 
Assuredly, this was fame; he could hope for no sweeter 


THE RED-BLOOD 


406 

boon—yet his ennui remained, and he yawned so vigor¬ 
ously that the interior of his mouth emitted a fine spray of 
moisture. For the moment he was impervious even to 
vanity. 

Another letter, however, proved more arresting. On 
the envelope he identified Artemas Bigelow’s brisk hand¬ 
writing, and drew out a card that bore a lithographed 
semblance of the Bremen Hotel, Chicago—and along the 
lower edge, the written message: 


Still three days left—better hurry! 

Arnold Desmond. 


Please come! 


Katerina. 


Then the door to the outer office opened, and the Rev. 
Ronald Beemish was shown in. 

The mayor was distinctly not pleased to discern the 
pious and dreary visage of the one-time president of the 
McNicol-for-Mayor Club. “The Great Stone Face”— 
that was Bigelow’s irreverent but perfect nickname, and 
it would live as long as the Reverend Beemish himself. 

By now, indeed, McNicol regarded all amateur reform¬ 
ers as a pestiferous nuisance; and it was his minister 
more than any one else who had induced the change in his 
point of view. Beemish had bothered him a good deal 
during the early months of his first term with constant 
clamorings for impossible crusades. The strict observance 
of the Sabbath, for example. The instantaneous abolish¬ 
ment of the red-light district. He seemed to regard the 
mayor as a kind of magnified Sunday-school superinten¬ 
dent. Like others of his ilk, he was utterly deficient, not 
only in a sense of humor, but even more markedly in the 
perception of practical difficulties and the necessity of 
compromise. Of late, indeed, as McNicol came more and 
more under the influence of liberal ideas, there had de- 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


407 

veloped a mute but obvious estrangement between them. 
His spiritual shepherd had not so much as set foot in the 
office for a year. 

“Let me congratulate you,” began Beemish, conven¬ 
tionally, but without enthusiasm. 

McNicol accepted the limp hand. “Thank you, Pas¬ 
tor.” He glanced nervously at his desk to reassure himself 
that the incriminating whisky bottle was safely secreted. 

The Great Stone Face had come on a delicate errand, 
it evolved. He had been deeply pained by the multiply¬ 
ing evidences of McNicol’s moral disintegration—more 
specifically, the matter of indulgence in alcohol; but thus 
far he had refrained from making a personal appeal. Now, 
however, he had been approached by some one very near 
and dear to the backslider, and petitioned to mediate with 
a view to saving the strayed lamb. 

“Who you mean—my wife?” McNicol, for the second 
time that day, was convulsed with bitter resentment. “She 
been talkin’ to you ’bout me?” 

The Reverend Ronald, conscious of imminent physical 
danger, suddenly fell to his knees. “Let us pray for divine 
guidance.” 

It was an unfair advantage, in a way. The strayed 
lamb, exasperated as he was, scarcely dared to refuse to 
follow suit. And the worst of it was that the minister did 
not content himself with seeking divine guidance; quite 
on the contrary, he utilized his opportunity to chronicle 
the complete list of McNicol’s slippings from grace, real 
and fancied; nor did he neglect to point out to God the 
obvious connection between the death of John and the 
sinfulness of John’s father. 

Altogether an excruciating ordeal. The victim was so 
pitifully helpless; the utmost he could do was to squirm 
and imagine horrible punishments for his tormentor. 
Reverend Beemish need not have hurried out so precipi- 


40 8 


THE RED-BLOOD 


lately at the prayer’s conclusion, for his victim was far 
past harming him. McNicol, in fact, regained his feet 
with difficulty. The tremendous energy he had generated 
in suppressing his desire to twist the Beemish neck seemed 
to curdle into an insidious infection. He trembled. A 
sharp spasm of pain contorted his stomach. 

Yes, he hated Beemish and all others of the same kid¬ 
ney; but his most virulent fury he reserved for his wife. 
Lessie it was who had heaped his indignity upon him. 
Lessie it was who had revealed the secret of their son’s 
unhappy end—who by blaming him converted the tragedy 
into terms of personal grievance. 

He fancied Beemish reporting to her in this wise: “Yes, 
sister, I got him to go down on his knees and ask God’s 
forgiveness. I can promise you you’ll have a better hus¬ 
band from now on,” 

Here again he was helpless, baffled. He could not in¬ 
flict physical punishment, as husbands were wont to do 
in the bright days of a bygone generation; and of what 
avail would it be to shout his maledictions against the 
stone wall of her deafness? 

“So she’s a-tellin’ folks I’m a drunkard, ay?” Yes, the 
Great Stone Face had hinted even graver accusations. 
Something about morals. McNicol’s morose eye chanced 
upon the lithographed card from Artemas Bigelow. 

“Well, if I got the name, might’s well have the game, 
too.” 

At first profoundly thoughtful, his expression gradu¬ 
ally kindled with the alluring idea. Why not slip over to 
Chicago for a few days? Somehow it seemed a fitting pun¬ 
ishment for Lessie. For the first time in his life, he per¬ 
mitted himself to feel unrestrainedly envious of Bigelow. 
After all, why be puritanical? His friend was right: 
morals were only for inferior men—the rank and file who 
had to be kept in check by foolish fears and taboos. 


THE GAY GOSSOON 


409 


“Jimmy! I’ve a mind to do it!” 

Then he scowled. No, he couldn’t trust Bigelow. He 
was afraid of Bigelow’s powers of ridicule, too; if he made 
a fool of himself he would never hear the last of it—and 
he did not like to be laughed at. 

In response to a swift association of ideas, McNicol 
wheeled about and glanced up toward the windows of the 
office building across the street. 

By George! if that fat rascal wasn’t holding the same 
girl on his lap again! 

“A fling’d do me good. Nothin’ outa the way, I don’t 
mean—but just a bit of fun.” He was quite certain on 
this point: he would not really transgress against the 
moral law; all he wanted was an innocent flirtation, some¬ 
thing to relieve the tedium of his existence. 

“If only I hadn’t thrown away that little widow’s ad¬ 
dress-” 

He started, sat up straight. As a matter of fact, he 
hadn’t thrown it away. Where was it? In an instant he 
remembered, and drew open the upper drawer. Yes. . . . 
“Mrs. Irma Evans.” 

The whole delectable episode came back to him vividly. 
After an instant’s hesitation he arose and went to the wall 
telephone, with the demeanor of a small boy about to 
smoke his first cigar. 

“Nothin’ outa the way, of course,” he reassured his 
beating heart. 



CHAPTER III 


MISGIVINGS 

I 

I T was a sparkling afternoon of the following June, and 
McNicoPs mood as soon as he had left the office of his 
family physician and started down Woodward Avenue 
toward the City Hall speedily caught the exhilaration of 
the sunshine and the passing crowds. 

The family physician was an old fogy, anyway. Mc¬ 
NicoPs stomach, after months of sporadic misbehavior, 
had inflicted such acute agony on him throughout the pre¬ 
ceding night that he had finally listened to Lessie’s ap¬ 
peals and taken medical advice. 

“You’ll have to stop drinking and smoking for a time,” 
said the doctor, after pawing him over. “Pie and cake, 
too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong organically, but 
you’d better consult a specialist in order to be on the safe 
side.” 

For the moment McNicol had been aghast. Stop drink¬ 
ing and smoking! But now, before he had walked a 
block, he was scoffing at the idea. His stomach felt quite 
at peace again; and to indicate his derision of all wolf- 
crying doctors, he paused and lighted one of his excellent 
cigars. 

“Consult a specialist! Hell! ” 

As he strode on down Woodward Avenue he became 
aware all at once of a familiar touch upon his arm, and, 

turning his head quickly, beheld Irma Evans at his side. 

410 


MISGIVINGS 


411 

“Hello, darling!” she said—and any one might have 
heard the phrase. 

McNicol raised his straw hat with formal politeness, 
as if to a lady he had slight acquaintance with, and forced 
a conventional smile. 

But Irma clung intimately to his arm. “Where’ve you 
been keeping yourself lately, Mac?” 

He had not visited her apartment, nor even telephoned 
her, for a fortnight. Their liaison was indubitably in its 
secondary and final stages. The Great Man had arrived 
at the not original conclusion that a relationship with a 
woman for whom he felt no personal affection speedily 
lost its allure. The anticipation had been exciting, the 
realization depressing. His earlier qualms of fear, how¬ 
ever, had quite vanished, and he was more or less aston¬ 
ished at the ease with which such affairs might be carried 
on; neither Lessie nor anybody else had the remotest sus¬ 
picion, he felt certain. And till now his mistress had been 
discretion itself. 

“Been very busy,” he answered. 

How could he get rid of her? Irma was conspicuously, 
if fashionably, dressed; and there was that in her physical 
opulence that accentuated the sexual. All Woodward Av¬ 
enue seemed to stare at them knowingly. Had she no 
sense at all, thus to waylay him on the city’s busiest street? 
What if Lessie should step out of one of these stores—or 
the Reverend Beemish? 

Fortunately, Irma herself paused. “I’ve got to leave 
you here,” she explained; but then, as he prepared to make 
his escape, she went on, with the first arbitrary quality in 
her voice he had ever heard, “I want to see you.” 

He must continue to simulate an aloof deference. “Yes, 
of course. I’ll call you-” 

“I want to see you to-night ” 

All he could do under the circumstances was to feign a 



412 


THE RED-BLOOD 


glad acquiescence and bide a more favorable time to forbid 
her ever approaching him in public again. 

n 

At five o’clock the City Hall reporters for the Globe and 
the Sun attended him, in accordance with their daily 
custom. 

“Nothin’ special to-day, boys,” he announced, but did 
not neglect to offer them cigars and a drink. “Except my 
daughter’s weddin’ next Monday, and I reckon I can’t 
tell you much ’bout that, even.” 

They nodded. “The society reporters are covering 
that,” vouchsafed the Sun man. 

McNicol was now on terms of the utmost friendliness 
with the newspaper men. Never so sagacious as Gayly 
O’Brien in devising valuable publicity, he had neverthe¬ 
less come to realize the vast importance of amicable re¬ 
lations with the press. Having painfully acquired a sense 
of news values, he made careful memoranda of all avail¬ 
able stories and turned them over to the reporters. They 
appreciated his efforts and liked him personally, with the 
result that even the hostile Herald and Sun gave him a 
good deal of space and treated him with as much consider¬ 
ation as possible. Of late, indeed, the Sun had become 
somewhat more friendly than the Republican Globe, 
which seemed to have taken to municipal muckraking. 

It was the Globe man, therefore, who asked, “What’s 
new in the street-car situation?” 

“Not a thing, Tom,” said the mayor. “I’m still keepin’ 
hot after ’em.” 

But Tom had evidently been instructed to demand more 
precise data. “Is there any truth in the report that you 
and Phil Morgan have been hatching up some settlement 
proposition?” 

“Not a speck. You can say for me this administration 


MISGIVINGS 


4 i 3 

ain’t a-goin’ to have no traffic of any kind with the cor¬ 
rupt corporation that’s bleedin’ the people of Detroit. 
No, sir, never! I’ll keep on a-fightin’ ’em till I’ve brought 
’em to their knees.” 

“Good! Now about that case against Joe Cottrell.” 

“Well, what about it?” 

Here McNicol could not afford to be so frank—at least 
not for publication. Cottrell, a notorious offender against 
the law, had only this morning been convicted in police 
court of keeping his sample room open after hours— 
largely as the result of the Globe’s disclosures. 

“Cottrell’s appealed to the recorder’s court. What we 
want to know is whether you’re going to press the case.” 

“But what’s that got to do with me?” the mayor pro¬ 
tested. “That’s up to the prosecutin’ attorney.” 

Tom contrived a cynical grimace. “Oh, we all know the 
prosecutor’s office will do what you say. You’re a friend 
of Cottrell’s and you could have the case dropped any 
time you said the word.” 

“As far’s I’m concerned, the lav/ ’ll take its course.” 

At that moment, the telephone rang. 

“Hello, Mac!” came a soft voice. “This is Joe.” 

“Oh, hello, Joe! ” McNicol answered, and both reporters 
affected an elaborate unconcern. 

“Say, Mac,” the voice continued, “who was the lady I 
saw you walking down Woodward Avenue with this after¬ 
noon?” 

“That? Nobody in particular.” The Great Man 
flushed. 

“Well, never mind. I just called to say maybe we’ll 
have to postpone our little trip to the Flats to-night. 
Clouding up a bit—may rain. But I’ll phone you again 
later v/hen we see what it’s going to be like.” 

“All right. Hope we can go. I have to be here next 
week on account of the weddin’, you know.” 




414 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Sure thing, Mac. But say, did you hear what they did 
to me in police court this morning?” 

“Yes, I heard, Joe,” said McNicol. “But don’t you 
worry ’bout that. Things ’ll be different in the recorder’s 
court.” 

“I hope so. You’re pretty sure you can fix it?” 

“Sure I can fix it! Leave it to me, Joe.” 

At the conclusion of this surprising conversation Mc¬ 
Nicol returned to his desk with brisk good humor, not at 
all fazed by the presence of the two reporters. 

“Who was that—Joe Cottrell?” inquired Tom, very 
casually. 

“Yep. A bit worried, too.” Then, to remove any doubt 
about the proper ethics of the matter, he observed: 
“Course, you boys understand that was confidential.” 

“Oh, sure!” said the Sun man, heartily, and Tom ap¬ 
peared to acquiesce. 

No further news having been exhumed, the mayor dis¬ 
missed the journalists in the friendliest manner imag¬ 
inable. 

“Here, have another smoke!” he insisted. “And take 
along a copy o’ this book. One of the finest I ever read. 
Just ordered a thousand of ’em to give to my friends.” 

And he presented each of them with A Message to 
Garcia . 

hi 

Lessie, a little more apprehensive than usual, met him at 
the door. Seeing her expression, he had an instant’s fear¬ 
ful premonition. 

“She knows about Irma. Some one saw us on the street 
and told her.” 

But the source of her anxiety was Beatrice. 

“Look here, pa,” she said, after she had led him up¬ 
stairs to their chamber. “Come this mornin’.” 


MISGIVINGS 


4i5 


He took the letter. 

My darling, 

I must see you once more. Can I come to-morrow after¬ 
noon? Oh, my little Carissima, I can't lose you, I love you so. 

Cesare. 

The envelope was addressed to Beatrice. 

“It come this mornin’,” Lessie repeated. “I kinda been 
suspicious the way Bee was actin’, so I thought I better 
open it, and if everything was all right I could seal it up 
again and give it to her.” 

This form of parental censorship did not offend his 
sense of propriety in the smallest degree. On the con¬ 
trary, he deemed it eminently proper. 

“Who’s this here Cesare?” 

“Why, don’t you remember? Mr. Pasco—that singer?” 

He did not, for several seconds. “Not that Eyetalian 
fellow? My God! but what’s this mean, ma?” 

“It means Bee’s been a-carryin’ on with him all the 
time she’s been engaged.” 

“But I thought it was Mary-” 

Lessie shook her head. “Seems Bee took him away 
from Mary. Listen a minute. After I read this letter, 
I didn’t say nothin’ at all, but this afternoon Pasco come 
here, anyhow. I crep’ quietly into the library where they 
was sittin’, and this Pasco had his arms around Bee and 
he was kissin’ her. When he see me, he jumped up an’ 
started to jabber something; and Bee she had one of her 
ructions; but I stood my ground. Told ’em both what I 
thought ’bout that sort of goin’s-on, and finally she said 
to him he better go now and they’d see each other again.” 

The veins stood out turgid from McNicol’s neck and 
forehead. “Where’s Bee now?” 

“In Jenny’s room.” Lessie laid a hand gently on her 
husband’s arm. Recently she seemed to have softened 



THE RED-BLOOD 


416 

toward him, almost as if she repented her folly in invoking 
the Reverend Beemish’s aid. “But, pa, I think mebbe 
you better go easy with her. You know how highstrung 
Bee is. Don’t try to force her.” 

He broke away impatiently, partly because he had no 
mind for such leniency, partly because he wished to es¬ 
cape her proffered reconciliation. As long as they re¬ 
mained estranged, even slightly, he felt his dalliance with 
Irma Evans somewhat justifiable. 

But Bee—his favorite, his pride, to whom alone of this 
dreary family all his affection went out! 

He found her, tearful yet defiant, with Aunt Jenny and, 
unexpectedly, Mary. Evidently there had been some sort 
of quarrel between the two sisters. For the first time in 
his life he saw bitter personal resentment in his elder 
daughter’s face, and later he could not help wondering how 
much she had cared for Pasco; the whole curious triangle 
forever remained shrouded for him. 

Immediately upon his truculent entrance, Mary left 
the room. 

“Now then—what you got to say for yourself?” he 
shouted, with an air of demolishing Beatrice’s unworthy 
defenses in advance. 

The encounter, as he might have foreseen, was not so 
easily to be won. Bee’s tearfulness vanished, her defiance 
increased, and he was discomfited to discover gradually 
that he had two antagonists instead of one. 

“The child shall marry the one she wants to,” Jenny 
suddenly asserted, with incredible vigor. 

He sneered. “Yeh, you’re a fine one to be givin’ that 
advice, after the mess you made of things! What hap¬ 
pened to the man you wanted?” 

“I’m not sorry! An’ I wouldn’t trade places with 
Lessie, if that’s what y’ mean. I had my hour of happi¬ 
ness, which is more’n she ever did, poor girl.” 


MISGIVINGS 


417 


The generation-old, long-repressed antagonism between 
them had suddenly flared up again; and this pitiful residue 
of the beautiful Jenny Gough had thrown off her mock 
meekness, her self-effacing humility, and was hitting out 
at her protector with blind and lethal fury. He, who had 
fed and clothed her for ten years, and all the time half- 
pitied, half-scorned the futility of her existence, now 
found himself set at naught by her in his own dwelling. 

Even so, he was not thinking of the personal affront, nor 
even of her absurd pity of Lessie. What aroused his ful¬ 
lest passion was the danger to his own child. All his most 
dismal forebodings about Bee’s future seemed on the 
verge of realization. She was the handsome and irresolute 
Gough virgin of the present generation—a reincarnation 
of Jenny herself, facing the same alternatives that Jenny 
had faced. And Jenny, impenitent, still glorying in her 
impenetrable stupidity, was urging her niece to follow in 
her own tragic footsteps. 

“You shut your mouth!” he retorted, brutally. “She’s 
my flesh and blood, not your’n. Who’s a-forcin’ her, any¬ 
how? Didn’t she choose young Pitkins herself?” 

Jenny, quite undaunted, began to speak, but Beatrice 
interrupted: “Yes, I chose him, papa, but I made a great 
mistake.” 

“Mistake! A fine time to be findin’ that out, four days 
ahead of your weddin’. Now listen here: if you don’t 
stop this monkey business, right off, I’m a-tellin’ you you 
need never expect another penny from me. I'll cut you 
off flat. Hear me?” 

“Oh, money!” Bee enunciated the word with ineffable 
disdain, then started crying. “What’s that compared to 
love? And I thought—I thought even if everybody else 
turned against me, you’d understand—you’d be on my 
side.” 


418 


THE RED-BLOOD 


She had the strange power, now as ever, of disarming 
him. He sensed the futility, moreover, of bullying her. 

“Oh, my precious—can’t you see I’m only a-tryin’ to 
save you from unhappiness? Can’t you see you’ll be the 
one who’ll have to suffer, not me?” He cared for this 
willful child of his more than any one else in the world, 
except perhaps his mother; and his mother was almost an 
abstraction. His tones became wistfully persuasive—as 
they had never before been, probably, in his whole life. 
He fancied himself fighting with Jenny for Bee’s very life. 

This change of tactics eventually justified itself. 

“Oh, I’ll go through with it, papa,” his daughter agreed, 
joylessly, “if it means so much to you. . . . Yes, I’ll 
go through with it, but I won’t promise to be much of a 
wife.” 

rv 

He rang the doorbell of Irma’s apartment shortly before 
nine o’clock. 

As he stood waiting, he remembered with ironical emo¬ 
tion the perturbed eagerness with which he had first rung 
this same bell—years ago, it seemed. But to-night he was 
in a mood of crestfallen disillusion—no longer a gay gos¬ 
soon, a venturesome light o’ love, but a man infelicitously 
entangled. 

Irma had commanded his presence, and he could not 
refuse. He felt driven, harassed; but this was not the sole 
cause of his disenchantment. The episode with Beatrice, 
for example: he had won, to be sure; he had saved her; 
but the tenderness she had evoked in him made his present 
expedition all the more revolting. He, the father of an 
exquisite daughter—a daughter about to be married— 
carrying on a shabby furtive liaison with a disreputable 
woman. Amour might be excusable and even becoming 
to very young persons; but in a man of nearly sixty it was 


MISGIVINGS 


419 


ridiculous and disgusting—nay, grossly indecent. Even 
an occasional old roue of his own years—Artemas Bigelow, 
for instance—might seem to enjoy such folly; but there 
was something in McNicol, some strain of Scotch hard¬ 
ness, that prevented his taking immorality lightly. The 
thought of Irma almost sickened him. 

And to-night, there had been Lessie, too. He had told 
her he must go to an important political conference and 
might not come home till late; that he might possibly go 
to Joe Cottrell’s cottage at the Flats for a day’s rest, 
though this was improbable because of the threatening 
wea,ther. A year, even six months ago, Lessie would have 
protested, might even have wept; but to-night, though he 
could perceive her distress, she voiced no complaint. 

“D’you think Bee ’ll be safe here without you, pa?” 

“Sure! That thing’s all over,” he had announced. 

But now he was not so sure. At any rate, it would have 
been far more prudent to stay at home to-night—not to 
let his perverse offspring out of sight until he took her 
to the church on Monday next. And it did not mend his 
tranquillity to promise that this was precisely what he 
would do, after to-night. 

Then, to make things worse, Lessie had kissed him when 
he left—for the first time in weeks. And just now, almost 
in front of Irma’s apartment, he had encountered an old, 
old man grinding an equally decrepit barrel organ. The 
occurrence was not unusual, save for the fact that the 
hymn being played was associated in his mind with two 
of the most poignant moments in his life. 

In the sweet 

By and by 

We shall meet on that beautiful shore. 

In a trice he was back at the window of his mother’s 
house, staring through the pane at her rapt face and that 


420 


THE RED-BLOOD 


of the girl Lessie. He was back again in the little parlor 
of his first home on High Street—scarcely a stone’s throw 
from Irma’s apartment—listening once more to the miracle 
of Lessie’s first conception. 

And now! 

He gave the ancient organ grinder a ten-dollar bill and 
felt a little better. A moment later, however, as he heard 
Irma’s footsteps on the other side of the door, he was 
deeply despondent again. Very faintly, he could still 
catch the wheezing strains of the barrel organ—like some 
ghostly Pilgrim’s Chorus summoning a repentant Tann- 
hauser from the Venusberg: 

In the sweet 
By and by- 

But his mistress opened the door upon his indecision 
just then, and it was too late to fly. 

They were still quarreling two hours later over the deli¬ 
cate issues raised by her walk with him on Woodward 
Avenue that, afternoon, when the telephone rang. 

“My God! What’s that?” McNicol leaped up guiltily. 

Irma smiled a little, and answered the call. “For you,” 
she announced. 

His jaw fell. “Who is it?” 

She secured the information. “Joe Cottrell.” 

Still greatly exasperated and frightened, he went to the 
telephone, swaying a bit unsteadily. 

“Hello, Mac!” said Cottrell. “Say, it’s all clearing off 
and we’re going. How soon can you be at my place?” 

It occurred to the mayor that here was a welcome ex¬ 
cuse for leaving Irma at once. “Fifteen minutes.” 

“Fine—only don’t let me spoil your fun.” 

“Oh no, that’s all right.” 

But when he had hung up the receiver, he confronted 
Irma angrily. “How’d Cottrell know I was here?” 



MISGIVINGS 


421 


“Ask me something easy.” 

“You told him—or, anyway, you been blabbin’ ’bout 
me to somebod}^.” 

“That’s a—” Irma seemed on the point of losing her 
temper; but more prudent considerations prevailed and 
she forced herself to smile endearingly. “No, darling, I 
swear I never told a soul. Let’s not fight any more. Sit 
down and be comfortable.” She began replenishing his 
whisky tumbler. 

The ensuing five minutes make unpleasant chronicling. 
McNicol had already drunk enough to be in an ugly frame 
of mind, and his consort enough to have become slightly 
maudlin. He refused more whisky and announced he was 
going—a declaration that produced a totally unexpected 
paroxysm in Irma. No, she would not let him leave her. 
To-night was hers. He must postpone his trip. But when 
he remained obdurate, her protestations of love merged 
into accusations of infidelity; he couldn’t pull the wool 
over her eyes—he had another woman; he was tired of 
her. He’d better be careful how he treated her; she’d 
stand a lot from him, but she’d never give him up without 
making a fuss. 

It was the first threat she had ever uttered, and had 
McNicol been in a judicious frame of mind he might 
have proceeded more warily. As it was he was consumed 
with hatred and he met her attacks with even bitterer 
recriminations. 

“By God! I’m through with this! ” 

At his words Irma flung herself upon him with passion¬ 
ate entreaty. He threw her off roughly, and when she ran 
toward him a second time he felt a reflexive twitching of 
his shoulder muscles and beheld with some surprise the 
impact of his fist upon her mouth. 

The blow was not a hard one; Irma did not fall down, 
but retreated a step, a look of increasing perplexity on her 


422 


THE RED-BLOOD 


usually impassive face. Suddenly she put one hand on 
her mouth, and when she saw the blood upon it she gave 
vent to a piercing scream. 

“Look out!” All McNicol’s anger shriveled into para¬ 
lyzing terror. He could not move. 

But Irma shrieked once more, then a third time. Be¬ 
fore she could utter a fourth scream, however, he was out 
on the street, running for dear life. 

v 

He found Joe Cottrell already seated in his phaeton, 
in the alley back of the saloon, and they set out at once 
toward the boathouse near the Belle Isle bridge wdiere his 
crony kept a twenty-foot sloop. By now the clouds had 
broken up, a full moon ambulated through the deep pools 
of intervening blue, and an auspicious west wind sped 
them on their way with quiet persistence. 

“A wonderful night for sailing,” Cottrell observed. 

McNicol was just as well pleased that their fellow mari¬ 
ners, Bigelow and Phil Morgan, were to meet them at the 
boathouse. He wanted to clear up the matter of the tele¬ 
phone call. 

“How’d you know where I was, Joe?” 

“Simple enough. I called your house, and when you 
weren’t there I took the liberty of trying the next likely 
place.” 

“That’s not answerin’ my question.” 

“Well, you know I saw you on Woodward Avenue this 
afternoon. Just put two and two together.” He seemed 
indisposed to explain further. 

McNicol fretted. “But who else knows ’bout this?” 

“Nobody, so far’s I can say. Of course I’m not giving 
you away.” 

“Just as well not to. Especially not to Bigelow.” 


MISGIVINGS 


423 

Cottrell nodded with sympathetic comprehension. He 
had not once departed from perfect gravity; his friend’s 
intrigue evidently impressed him as neither extraordinary 
nor important. Artemas Bigelow would have laughed 
himself almost to death under similar circumstances; but 
Cottrell was soft-spoken discretion itself. McNicol felt 
well-nigh safe again. There still remained the possibility 
that Irma’s screams might have attracted a patrolman; 
but even if she were foolish enough to mention his name, 
the police department could be relied upon to suppress the 
news. It was highly incredible, indeed, that any paper— 
even the hostile Sun or the muckraking Globe —would 
dare to publish private scandal regarding the city’s chief 
executive. 

“I s’pose,” said Cottrell, “you’ve seen the story about 
you in the Globe ” 

“What story?” McNicol had another bad moment. 
“The Globe ain’t out yet, is it?” 

“Yes. That is, the midnight edition. I meant to bring 
it along, but I thought you’d probably seen it.” Once 
more he stopped short, inconsiderately. 

It seemed unbelievable that the sordid episode with 
Irma could have reached the press so rapidly. “You mean 
—about her?” he faltered. 

“No, no. They’ve gone and printed our whole conver¬ 
sation—over the phone, you know, this afternoon—about 
that case of mine in police court. At least, they’ve printed 
your part of it, where you promised me to drop the case 
in recorder’s court. They say you admitted it was me you 
were talking to, and they want to know if that’s the way 
you keep your promises to help them clean up the city.” 

The incredible perfidy of newspaper men struck Mc¬ 
Nicol dumb. 

“How d’ you figure they got hold of it?” asked Cottrell. 

“Why, Tom an’ that Sun fellow was in the office at 


424 


THE RED-BLOOD 


the time, but I told ’em it was confidential and they 
promised not to touch it. Did the Sun run it, too?” 

Cottrell shook his head. “You don’t mean you actually 
admitted it was me?” 

“Sure I did. I’ve done the same thing dozens of times 
—given the reporters the inside facts and told ’em not to 
use ’em. Not that I give a damn about this particular 
story. We can both deny it, and later on we’ll let your 
case die, just like we planned.” 

“Well, that’s fair enough. I can’t afford to have that 
conviction stamd. It’s the third offense and the recorder 
may feel he’s got to soak me hard.” 

“Don’t you worry ’bout that, Joe,” the mayor reassured 
him. “But you can bet your boots no Globe man ’ll ever 
set foot in my office again.” 

It was this aspect of the matter, in truth, that wounded 
him most deeply. Had he not always treated Tom with 
the utmost generosity? Had he not that very afternoon 
dispensed cigars and excellent liquor to Tom—yes, even 
a copy of A Message to Garcia? And this was his re¬ 
ward. A severe blow had been dealt McNicol’s faith in 
the puissance of friendship, the efficacy of being a good 
scout. 

His melancholy persisted even after they had reached 
the boathouse, picked up Bigelow and Morgan, and glided 
out upon the river. He had an indefinable presentiment 
of evil. Ought he not to remain behind and make certain 
that Irma was safely muzzled—to say nothing of issuing 
a prompt denial of the Globe story? He remembered 
Lessie’s look of distress, too: something—almost any¬ 
thing—might happen to Bee, and he was the only one 
who could control her. 

But gradually, under the influence of his companions’ 
infectious spirits and the liberal rum rations, he reacted 
toward a cheerfuller viewpoint. The night itself was 


MISGIVINGS 


425 

irresistible in its glamour; slowly the sloop shouldered its 
rippling way against the river’s swift current, past the 
Windmill Point light and out into the mysterious spa¬ 
ciousness of Lake St. Clair. The recollection of other 
similar excursions enlivened him as well. Joe Cottrell’s 
cabin was situated on the north channel of that alluvial 
fan at the foot of the St. Clair River, known to the dis¬ 
trict as “The Flats.” Thither this same congenial quar¬ 
tette had sailed many times before, starting at midnight 
and reaching the cabin sometime the next forenoon. 

But to-day, fortune was not so constant. The three 
guests who had dropped off to sleep shortly before dawn, 
leaving Cottrell at the tiller, awoke at noon to discover 
the wind had completely died away and that the sloop 
lay becalmed at the approach to New Baltimore Bay. 
The situation was exasperating; they could discern the 
tall chimneys of the salt block that marked the entrance 
to the north channel, ten miles across the bay, yet they 
could not stir a foot in its direction; the sail drooped 
lifeless in the hot sunlight that beat down mercilessly 
upon them hour after hour. Hunger began to assail them, 
too; for they had brought along little food, relying on the 
cottage’s ample provisioning. 

“Thank God, we can still keep on drinking,” said 
Bigelow. 

McNicol refused a glass. The intensity of the sun’s 
glare had given him a headache and his much-abused 
stomach now began to throb uncomfortably. 

“Here’s to our next governor!” Cottrell proposed. 

Phil Morgan took exception. “Governor—hell! 

Here’s to our next President!” 

McNicol, secretly pleased as always to have others 
voice his own secret ambitions, acknowledged the toast 
with becoming modesty. 


426 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“President, eh?” Bigelow wiped his lips. “Say—too 
bad you can’t ever be President, isn’t it?” 

“Can’t? Why can’t he?” Morgan fairly took the 
words out of the Great Man’s mouth. 

“Why, because he wasn’t born in this country, of 
course.” The attorney grinned complacently. “That’s 
what the Constitution provides, unfortunately.” 

“Dog-gone—that’s so! Never thought of that.” 

Morgan acknowledged his error flippantly; more than 
likely he had never before heard of the constitutional 
stipulation. Certainly McNicol had not. He was stag¬ 
gered, bereft; it was as if he might casually look down 
and discover that one of his legs had been cut off. 

But the others were watching him, he perceived. 

“Of course it’s so,” he heard himself asserting. “I 
knew that all along.” 

At four o’clock Joe Cottrell yawned. “Guess I’ll go 
forward and lie down. Not likely to be any wind till 
sunset now, but if there is be sure to call me.” 

Hardly had his snores begun when a bank of clouds 
rose from the northwest horizon, above the town of New 
Baltimore, and presently the glassy surface of the lake 
puckered with the harbingers of the breeze. The boom 
creaked. 

“Leave him lay! ” Bigelow checked Morgan’s tentative 
movement toward their host’s prostrate figure. “I’ve 
sailed this tub into the north channel in all sorts of 
weather.” 

Almost in an instant, it seemed, the sun disappeared 
and the clouds had appropriated the sky. The wind 
freshened, the sloop lunged through the waves, the water 
slushed along its sides. Still the weary Cottrell slept on. 

McNicol was too far submerged in the revelation of his 
presidential ineligibility to observe closely the swift 
approach of the storm; but Morgan, his face beginning 


MISGIVINGS 


427 

to show white, again crept forward to awaken the sloop’s 
master. 

“Hell! Leave him alone, I say!” Bigelow was not 
exactly drunk, but he was in a boisterous mood. “I guess 
I can skipper this boat-” 

The thing had happened. A sudden violent gust de¬ 
scended upon them, and before Bigelow could point up 
into the wind the sloop had rolled far over—then with a 
peculiar shudder stood on her beam and remained there. 
The sail struck the waves with a little slap, then slowly 
sank perhaps a foot or two beneath the surface, so that 
the sloop might be described as being two-thirds capsized. 

McNicol found himself upon the exposed hull, staring 
into the equally astonished faces of Bigelow and Phil 
Morgan. 

“I’m damned!” said the amateur pilot, and laughed. 

“Where’s Joe?” 

At that instant Cottrell’s despondent face emerged seal¬ 
like from the water a few feet off, and he clambered up 
beside them. 

For the moment, while they were still preoccupied with 
the novelty of their situation, the affair seemed more than 
anything else a capital joke on all of them, Bigelow espe¬ 
cially. But when their attention devolved upon the prob¬ 
lem of extrication, it began to occur to them that the 
mishap might have inconvenient results. An hour ago 
the bay had shown a dozen sails; now, not one; all the 
other crafts had scurried to harbor long ago. 

“I’m afraid this is pretty serious business,” Cottrell 
finally remarked. 

Bigleow refused to acquiesce. “Some one’s sure to 
spot us.” He managed to reach a pole from the sloop’s 
interior, and, attaching his handkerchief to one end, waved 
it ludicrously at the expanse of water. 

“Hell! Nobody ’ll see that!” said McNicol. 



THE RED-BLOOD 


428 

The air was no longer so clear; they could scarcely 
descry New Baltimore or Fair Haven, seven or eight 
miles away to the west. To the north and east lay 
nothing but a low and treeless shore, perhaps two, per¬ 
haps five miles away. 

“Anyway, we won’t drown as long as we stay here,” 
Bigelow pointed out. 

The wind, however, was increasing in violence, and 
with it the waves. The overturned sloop moved uneasily, 
and it became more and more impossible for the ship¬ 
wrecked four to keep from slipping into the water; yet 
whenever they did so the waves battered them roughly 
against the hull. It began to rain. 

After an hour they realized they were growing much 
weaker. 

“My God!” gasped Morgan’s blue lips. “We can’t stay 
here.” 

This was obvious enough, yet no hopeful alternative 
presented itself. None of them could swim strongly 
enough to risk an attempt to reach the nearest barren 
shore. All of them were woefully out of condition. 

“Our only chance is to build a raft,” pronounced Cot¬ 
trell. 

They contrived to secure eight or ten floor boards; 
these they lashed together at both ends with pieces of 
sheet-rope. It was a poor makeshift, but they discovered 
that by keeping their bodies under water and merely 
resting their hands upon the boards they could keep their 
heads above the surface. By swimming with their legs, 
they would be able to make some progress. 

“All aboard!” commanded Cottrell, and they left the 
plunging, stricken sloop to its fate. 

Their objective was the low coast to the east, which 
happened to be closest at hand, as well as almost directly 
in the path of the wind. Even now, they had by no 


MISGIVINGS 


429 


means reached the point of physical exhaustion; their 
faculties were alert, and they remained confident of the 
issue. The rain ceased, too, and the wind lost a little of 
its rampancy. 

Another hour passed. The shore seemed scarcely 
nearer, and it was only by looking back at the dim con¬ 
tour of the sloop that they could reassure themselves of 
their advance. But by now they had almost spent them¬ 
selves and it was beginning to grow dark. 

The conviction had gradually descended upon all of 
them that they were probably going to die, and to each 
the realization came with the force of considerable aston¬ 
ishment. They had read of other people being drowned 
—yes, by the score—but that this fate should have chosen 
them seemed incredible. 

Otherwise, the conviction reacted divergently, and it 
would have been interesting to note their contrasting de¬ 
meanor in the face of death. Phil Morgan had weakened 
first. “I’m done for,” he sighed, and would have slipped 
back into the water had not the others interfered. By 
this time he was less than half-conscious, his eyes staring, 
his lips maundering imbecilities. Bigelow had to devote 
all his energy to holding him against the raft. 

Joe Cottrell had not uttered a sound throughout the 
hour’s torment. What his thoughts were as the end 
approached can never be narrated. His face was set, 
his eyes melancholy, his mutilated nose purple. Bigelow, 
on the contrary, continued very noisy, exhorting Morgan 
to renascent courage, addressing McNicol in jocular 
fashion. No tearful regrets here for past sins; if he 
must die, he would do so with irreverent grace. 

“Been quite a game, Mac. Life’s been good to you 
and me, eh?” 

McNicol, in turn, was in a wholly different frame of 
mind from his fellows. At the first he had buffeted the 


430 


THE RED-BLOOD 


waves with enormous exasperated vigor, as if he ex¬ 
pected to daunt them, abash them into submission, by 
the onslaught of his indignation. He had been strongest 
of the four, too; but now his splendid life force ran low. 
He was beginning to feel numb, and his recalcitrant 
stomach, turning traitor, flamed with anguish. 

Yet he did not want to die. He would not die. Sud¬ 
denly he lifted his voice in frantic screams of protest at 
the indignity; but a wave slopped into his open mouth 
and he was silenced. 

As his senses began to blur a little he was visited by 
an odd obsession, an indefinite but powerful conviction 
of sin—born of his dormant strain of self-scourging Gaelic 
puritanism. And he saw with perfect clarity that this 
was God’s punishment for all his many derelictions. 

An intense and fervent prayer came to his lips, and 
he raised his eyes toward the zenith. 

“O God,” he supplicated the personal Deity, “I know 
I been wicked, but if You’ll only save me now, I promise 
I’ll sin no more! I’ll be a good man! From this day, I 
will serve You faithfully!” 

Then, as if in immediate response, there came a trium¬ 
phant shout from Artemas Bigelow. 

“Bottom! I can touch bottom!” 

McNicol felt a little sheepish when he discovered he 
had been negotiating for divine succor in but four feet 
of water. 


vi 

A promise made under such circumstances—even a 
solemn promise to God Himself—is tainted with mistake 
and duress, and therefore unenforceable. At least, that 
was McNicol’s opinion by the following afternoon as 
he sat thinking the matter over in the interurban trolley 
car that was carrying him back to Detroit. 


MISGIVINGS 


43i 


He was alone—a circumstance that contributed not a 
little to his resumption of complacency. For he was the 
only one of the four who had sufficiently recuperated 
from the previous day’s ordeal to return to the city. 
There had been further drains upon their strength even 
after Bigelow’s felicitous discovery: first, a mile’s 
plodding through the shallow water before they came to 
the forlorn shore; then a long and weary pilgrimage over 
the sand, till at last they chanced upon a French-Canuck 
squatter paddling his duck boat in one of the protected 
channels. By the time he had conducted them to his 
fishing shack it was completely dark, and Phil Morgan 
especially was in a dangerous state of exhaustion. This 
morning they had been conveyed to Algonac, where the 
others still remained—Morgan under a doctor’s care, with 
a bad cold and fever; Bigelow and Joe Cottrell in their 
hotel rooms, also at a low ebb. 

“Guess I got more guts than any of them fellows,” 
McNicol congratulated himself. 

He was feeling extremely well, in fact. The only after 
effect of his exposure was a slight stiffness in his arms 
and neck, but he had apparently not caught cold and 
his fickle stomach had reverted to complete subservience. 

And this flattering physical resilience restored his cus¬ 
tomary self-sufficiency. 

“I coulda got out all right, by myself.” It was natural 
enough to belittle Jehovah’s part in the transaction. His 
sins, which had seemed so substantial while he was strug¬ 
gling in the water, now shrank into negligibility. 

“Reckon I’m ’bout as good as most men.” 

With that, he dismissed his compact with God; and as 
if to illustrate the casual nature of his repudiation, he 
flecked the ash from his cigar to the floor of the smoking 
compartment. 

The impiety hovered on the fringe of his conscious- 


432 


THE RED-BLOOD 


ness, nevertheless; and, curiously enough, from that 
moment his buoyancy began to be deflated by sharp mis¬ 
givings. 

He could never become President: that recollection 
fulgurated painfully through his breast. But he was 
thinking principally of other matters. What if the news 
of the shipwreck should reach the newspapers? 

“Look pretty, wouldn’t it?—me goin’ on a booze party 
with Joe Cottrell and Phil Morgan. Fine chance I’d 
have of puttin’ the kibosh on that Globe story, or of 
makin’ people believe I was fightin’ the street-car com¬ 
pany.” 

There was little likelihood of such a mishap, however. 
The four had taken care to give fictitious names at 
Algonac, and it was improbable that they had been recog¬ 
nized. 

But that revolting fracas with Irma Evans! Suppose 
her screams had attracted, not a discreet policeman, but 
a crowd of gossipy neighbors. Just suppose his mistress, 
in the fury of her indignation, had disclosed the shame¬ 
ful liaison. He, the mayor, had struck a woman in the 
face with his fist! It seemed quite possible now that the 
Globe, having once started after his scalp, would not 
scruple to print Irma’s story. 

And Beatrice? 

“I ought to’ve stayed home.” 

That was the unanalyzable certitude that burned its 
way through his brain, over and over again. 

The moment he reached the city, he bought copies of 
the afternoon papers, opened them tremulously. 

His fears regarding Irma had been groundless, it 
seemed, for there was no reference anywhere to his illicit 
affair. The front pages of both newspapers, however, 
swarmed with repetitions of the name McNicol. How 


MISGIVINGS 433 

proud he would have been, once upon a time, of such 
prodigal publicity. 

The first two columns of the Herald, for example, were 
surrendered to a detailed account of the nearly fatal 
adventure in Lake St. Clair. There were pictures of the 
whole quartette—and even a fanciful pen-and-ink sketch 
of the mariners clinging to the overturned sloop. The 
first lines ran: 

Mayor McNicol, accompanied by Artemas Bigelow, his 
attorney; Joseph Cottrell, the Gratiot Avenue saloonkeeper; 
and P. A. Morgan, the political agent of the street-railway 
corporation, narrowly escaped death. . . . 

The four endeavored to conceal their identity, but were recog¬ 
nized at Algonac. . . . 

The phenomenon that distracted the Great Man from 
this unfortunate notoriety was the reoccurrence of his 
family name in the last two columns of the paper. 

BEATRICE McNICOL JILTS FIANCE 

MARRIES ITALIAN VOCAL TEACHER 


mayor’s DAUGHTER, ON EVE OF WEDDING TO HARRISON PIT' 
KINS, SUDDENLY CHANGES MIND. SECRETLY MAR¬ 
RIED TO CESARE PASCO. 


It became known this morning that Beatrice McNicol, the 
youngest daughter of the mayor, whose wedding . . . 

Taking advantage of her father’s absence on his ill-fated 
sailing trip . . . 

The bride was accompanied only by her aunt, Mrs. Jenny 
Evanturel. . . . 

“Taking advantage of her father’s absence. . . .” 

Then, as if to signalize the final vengeance of a jealous 




THE RED-BLOOD 


434 

God, he found on his desk at the City Hall a letter from 
his brother Glen, stating that his mother was exceedingly 
ill at Cartwright and that she wanted him to come at once. 
The letter was dated two days ago and must have reached 

his office yesterday morning. Perhaps by now- 

His secretary brought in a telegram. 



CHAPTER IV 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 

I 

^~|~“ V HE day after the funeral, McNicol sat near the edge 
- 2 - of the Cartwright escarpment, passing the events 
of his career in melancholy review. 

In his hand he still clutched his mother’s dilapidated 
account book. He had been going through its earlier 
pages, with their record of the moneys she had earned 
by giving piano lessons—a pittance she had in those days 
devoted to helping him through medical school. 

“Lessie Gough,” one entry ran, “April 17, ’63. 1 les¬ 

son, 15c.” That might have been the very day of his 
return from Ann Arbor. 

His cheeks were wet with tears of regret. It seemed to 
him he had neglected his mother cruelly in recent years. 
How glibly he had sentimentalized about her in public— 
yet, since his first election to office, he had not visited 
her, had not Gnce assuaged her loneliness. And that, 
surely, was the fair test of how much he cared. Deeds 
counted, not facile words. Useless to say he had meant 
differently. Useless to remind himself of the magnifi¬ 
cent monument he had ordered for her grave. It was 
too late to make amends now; and all his ambitions for 
self-aggrandizement, all the petty schemings that had 
preoccupied him to her exclusion, became all at once 
terribly futile. 

The thought of Beatrice, the only other one he loved 
deeply, was intolerably agonizing, too. Spoiled for life 

435 





THE RED-BLOOD 


436 

now, she was—because he had failed as a father. And 
those others: John—Mary—the ungrateful Arthur? 
Perhaps if he had been more patient—kinder? 

He had defied God and he had been struck down for 
the sacrilege. The conviction of sin could not be dis¬ 
lodged a second time. 

Till this instant, it cannot be gainsaid there had been an 
odd ingredient of gratification in his gloomy reflections, 
a species of voluptuous self-flagellation. He always en¬ 
joyed crying. But now, let it be recorded, he was not 
content to remain groveling and supine. He was still 
an indurate and resolute man, essentially. The effect 
upon him of a culmination of adversities had always been 
tonic, invigorating. As a boy, he had fought his way 
ahead over disheartening obstacles. Later in his life, it 
had been the convergence of mortal blows upon his new 
pharmaceutical business—old Rorick’s lawsuit, George 
Wickham’s betrayal, the partial destruction of the barn 
by fire, his bankruptcy—that stirred him to his greatest 
aggressiveness. He had not really started fighting during 
the campaign three years ago until Artemas Bigelow dis¬ 
closed the improbability of his election. 

The escarpment, which had inspired the three great 
resolves that were to influence his whole adult life, now 
seemed to induce a fresh and radical readjustment of 
values. He was as savagely in earnest as that younger 
McNicol, but greatly chastened. No further fervent 
promises to the Almighty issued from his tense lips, 
yet his temper was tinged with a reverential humility 
wholly without precedent. 

Irma Evans. He would sever their sinful relationship 
instantly. Just an hour ago he had passed the now 
decaying structure that once had sheltered the Queen’s 
Inn; and with abrupt vividness the distressing scene in 
its lobby came back to him: the half-intoxicated girl 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 


437 


giggling on her seducer’s knee—his mother’s tears. She 
who herself had suffered the tragedy of illicit love! At 
the recollection, her undutiful son bowed his head in 
bitter shame. Irma Evans was no unsophisticated girl, 
to be sure; he had not wronged her; but his own unclean 
profligacy appeared none the less abhorrent for that. 

Whisky. He would never touch it again. 

Politics. His career. He remembered the highminded, 
if shallow-rooted, ideals with which he had been informed 
at first: his professed motive to serve his city honestly, 
to befriend the humble man. And all this righteous zeal 
now seemed indelibly sweet, and he was surfeited with his 
cheap success. 

In his quest of the good he raised his eyes to the 
unfolded panorama of hills and sky. The valley, too, and 
the remnants of the village whence he had sprung. Cart¬ 
wright had paid the penalty for its great blunder in re¬ 
fusing to subsidize the railroad. Wiser municipalities 
still flourished, but Cartwright was slowly disintegrating 
into nothingness. There were not a dozen inhabited 
structures in the place now; the three hundred souls 
who once had laughed and wept and haggled together 
were less than thirty. Burdock weeds and uncut hay 
threatened to obliterate even these lethargic survivors. 

This spectacle of desuetude saddened McNicol. Even 
as Cartwright typified the fleeting transience of the works 
of man, so did his own life typify the pathetic, inexorable 
evanescence of man himself. 

He was growing old. 

Suddenly there leaped up into his mind the passionate 
determination to make his life significant, an intense and 
almost agonized craving to escape the oblivion of death, 
to leave behind him some vestige that would survive 
forever. The pitiful human desire for immortality. 


438 


THE RED-BLOOD 


II 

The fruits of this profound conversion were already 
manifesting themselves when Phil Morgan came into 
the mayoral office one morning a month later, bearing 
with him the third draft of the proposed street-railway 
settlement. 

McNicol did not offer his friend a drink; and indeed 
it is doubtful whether Morgan would have accepted one, 
for his narrow escape from drowning had had its effect; 
he, too, was an altered man. 

“Here we are!” he proffered. 

The mayor began reading the document intently, 
though by now he knew its content thoroughly. 

“Got it all in, this time?” he asked, abstractedly. 

“Every word.” 

McNicol nevertheless drew his own annotated second 
draft from the desk and made careful comparison. He 
trusted Morgan to a high degree, but the agreement 
represented something precious and personal to him, and 
he could afford to take no chances. 

Soon after his return from Cartwright he had opened 
negotiations with the company. The possibility of settle¬ 
ment had interested him since Morgan’s first mention 
of the matter; but until the hour on the escarpment 
he had put the idea from him, on the grounds of political 
inexpediency. The people wanted their leader to fight 
the street car company, senselessly or no; that had been 
Gayly O’Brien’s creed, and later his own. But now 
he viewed the project solely on its merits. If he could 
secure lower fares at once, instead of waging a hopeless 
and interminable contest in the courts, if he could pro¬ 
vide for municipal purchase and ownership at any time 
the people desired—why fight at all? 

The street-railway company had been a conciliatory 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 


439 


opponent. The present agreement provided in brief for 
four cent fares on the five-cent lines, the other lines 
to continue to charge three cents, with new workingmen’s 
tickets at nine for a quarter. There was a further pro¬ 
vision that if at any time the company’s net earnings 
exceeded 8 per cent, all fares were to be lowered pro 
tanio. In return for these concessions, the company was 
to receive certain extensions of its franchises, so that 
all the latter would expire together, some twenty years 
later; but specific arrangement had been made for munici¬ 
pal ownership. 

Certainly nothing could be more reasonable from a 
business standpoint and McNicol anticipated no difficulty 
in convincing the electorate. He was highly pleased with 
/ himself. Here at last was one big piece of constructive 
and beneficial legislation he would have carried into 
effect—the amicable settlement of a controversy that had 
vexed the city for many years. Detroit was to be the 
first municipality in the country to solve its traction 
problem sensibly. 

Even if he never accomplished another thing, his fame 
would be fairly secure. But this was to be but the first 
of a series of prodigious benefits to the common people. 
Detroit should be the best governed, the most economi¬ 
cally administered, city in the world. Later on, as Gov¬ 
ernor, he would achieve more spacious reforms. And 
perhaps when the country beheld the miracles he was 
performing in Detroit and Michigan, it would insist upon 
the Constitution’s amendment to permit his elevation to 
the Presidencv. 

“Seems O. K.,” he told Morgan. 

“I thought it ’d be. You see, I got the company’s 
formal execution on the last page. Now all you have 
to do is sign it yourself, and it ’ll be ready for the news¬ 
papers.” 


440 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Good,” approved McNicol. “Can’t be too soon, if 
the people are goin’ to vote on it in November.” The 
agreement was subject to ratification at the polls before 
becoming effective. 

He reached for his silver pen—the gift of the Kosciusko 
Reserves—with the intention of signing the document at 
once. 

Then his telephone rang. 

“Joe Cottrell speaking.” 

McNicol looked carefully about ior secreted reporters. 
“Yes, Joe.” 

“I’m over in the recorder’s court, waiting for my case 
to start and I want you to come clean and tell me first 
as last whether you’re going to call things off or fall down 
on me.” 

This vexing issue had at last to be decided, after a 
month of evasion. On the one side stood the mayor’s new 
conception of impartial justice, the determination to do 
away with favoritism and personal “pull”; on the other, 
his friendship for Cottrell and his pledged word to inter¬ 
vene in his behalf. 

“What more can I do, Joe?” he temporized. “I’ve 
already spoken to the prosecutor. You know ’s well ’s 
I do the Globe’s watchin’ me like a hawk! ” 

“Hell!” The saloon keeper’s voice became overtly 
hostile. “You got to do more than speak to the prose¬ 
cutor. You got to tell him. Now mind you, you promised 
to take care of me on this; and if you double-cross me, 
I’m going to get }mu sooner or later, good and plenty.” 

“Don’t you dare threaten me!” 

Cottrell’s tones instantly softened again. “But look 
here, Mac!” he pleaded. “This is damn’ important to 
me. The judge is likely to send me up, and if he does 
it will just kill my poor old mother. It’s chiefly her I’m 
thinking of.” 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 


441 


A deft appeal. McNicol was shaken. 

“All I want this morning is an adjournment,” the voice 
went on. “No harm in that, is there? The Globe can’t 
object, can it? That’ll give us time to talk things over.” 

“If I do fix it,” bargained the mayor, “will you promise 
to obey the law after this?” 

“Sure, sure!” 

“All right. Have the prosecutor call me up.” 

McNicol turned to Phil Morgan, frowning. 

“That’s the devil of this game,” he remarked as he 
signed the street-railway agreement. “When a man brings 
in his mother, what can you do about it?” 

Morgan’s somewhat cherubic face clouded with inde¬ 
cision. 

“I’d say—find out whether he isn’t just stringing you.” 

“How’s that?” 

The agent’s new conscientiousness prevailed over his 
less worthy scruples. “You’ve been mighty decent to me, 
Mac, and I’m going to put you wise to something. Re¬ 
member my telling you all about my own mother? Well, 
I was lying. I never knew her. She died when I was 
a baby. So did Joe Cottrell’s. He’s just been pulling 
your leg, and he was the one who tipped me off that you’d 
fall hard for the mother stuff.” 

“What’s that you’re sayin’—he ain’t got no old mother 
livin’ up yonder in ‘the Thumb’?” 

Morgan shook his head. “Well”—he picked up the 
settlement agreement—“I’m off; and I hope you ’ll for¬ 
give me for my share of the game. I’m darned ashamed 
of myself.” 

Scarcely had he gone when the telephone rang once 
more. 

It was the prosecuting attorney. “Cottrell says you 
want me to adjourn his case. Of course I’ll be glad to 
do as you say, but-” 



442 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Cottrell lies,” said McNicol wrathfuliy. “Go ahead 
with it. Give him hell!” 

After a moment he called in the reporters and handed 
them copies of the settlement agreement. 

. hi 

That afternoon, in Artemas Bigelow’s law office, he 
was reading over another settlement agreement, bearing 
the signature, not of the street-car corporation’s officers, 
but of Irma Evans. 

“Seems O. K.,” he repeated, with a sigh of relief. 

Bigelow had handled the ticklish affair well. More, 
he had utterly refrained from exploiting the splendid 
opportunity for chaffing his client concerning this sly, 
furtive venture into the snares of sex. He might so 
easily have said, “I told you so,” or even referred satiri¬ 
cally to the similar negotiations he had conducted three 
years ago in the matter of the claim of Selma, the wait¬ 
ress, against the licentious Arthur. 

But even now he withheld his quizzical shafts. 

“You’re an odd one,” he puzzled, soberly. “Exactly 
like you to slip off this way, all by yourself, and try to 
hide the affair from all your friends. Hadn’t you better 
let me fix things up for you the next time you want to 
play?” 

“Never again! No more women on my neck.” 

“That’s just it—you take such things so seriously.” 
The lawyer studied his friend’s face interestedly. “You 
know, I’ve been thinking about you, and I’ve come to 
the conclusion you couldn’t ever have had any fun when 
you were young. It’s the boys who were brought up too 
strictly—or who had a rather hard time of it for some 
reason or other—that always bust loose when they’re your 
age. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. And that’s 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 


443 


why I was glad to see Arthur have his fling when he was 
young. He’ll settle down now and be a model citizen.” 

McNicol did not like even this sympathetic speculation 
at his expense; and he liked even less the attorney’s ap¬ 
proval of his errant son. Arthur and Gayly O’Brien had 
had the bad grace not to come to business disaster thus 
far. 

“I s’pose that theory explains you, you old skate/’ he 
jeered. 

“It does,” admitted Bigelow with a trace of regret. 
“My father wanted me to be a minister. I escaped that, 
but I never even looked at women till I was forty.” 

“You ain’t boastin’?” 

The attorney shook his round bald head ruefully. 
“But I know more about handling the frail sex than you. 
That, I’d say, was your greatest handicap: you don’t 
understand women. You either put ’em up on a pedestal 
or you despise ’em. Chiefly despise ’em. But under¬ 
stand them? Not you!” 

McNicol had had enough. “You keep this.” He 
handed the agreement back. “Have much trouble?” 

“That’s just it. I did. The lady doesn’t feel very 
friendly. You see, you didn’t know how to break the 
thing off gracefully. All my ex-Katerinas still love me.” 

“Anyhow, thank God, it’s all over now.” 

“I guess so.” Bigelow hesitated. “Thought you said 
Irma was a widow.” 

“Sure she is! Husband was killed in the war.” 

“No. I asked her about that just to make sure. What 
she tcld you was that he hadn’t come back from the 
war. Well, he didn’t, but the reason wasn’t that he was 
dead. Tired of supporting Irma, so he simply dis¬ 
appeared. n 

McNicol was aghast. “But, Jiminy Crismus! where 


444 


THE RED-BLOOD 


“Says she doesn’t know, which is probably true enough.” 

The penitent went through another purgatory. What 
if, after all, he was not destined to escape unscathed? 
What if the scandal did leak out? What if it reached 

Lessie’s ears? 

“I shouldn’t worry about Evans ever showing up,” 
Bigelow went on, reassuringly. “Your secret is quite 
safe. By the way, I don’t suppose anybody else knows 
about it.” 

“No.” Then McNicol remembered. “Except Joe Cot¬ 
trell.” 

“Cottrell!” The attorney whistled. “Well, I guess 
it’s just as well I got Mrs. Evans to sign up to-day, 
after what the judge did to Joe this afternoon.” 

“Did he soak him hard?” 

Bigelow, by way of response, exhibited a headline on the 
front page of the Herald’s late edition: “Cottrell Sent to 
Prison. Thirty days in House of Correction for Saloon 
Keeper.” 

“Joe’s going to be camping on your trail from now on,” 
he pointed out. “Probably ’ll get in touch with Irma, 
try to make you trouble. Lucky for you she settled this 
morning. But say, what was your idea in turning Joe 
down at the last minute?” 

The mayor outlined his motives, not mentioning, how¬ 
ever, the disclosure concerning Cottrell’s mother. 

Thereupon Bigelow resumed his attack. “I’ll grant 
your sincerity, and I respect it—but why swing too far 
in the opposite direction? You’re sick of cheap politics, 
but is there any sense in overdoing the reform?” 

“I ain’t overdoin’ nothin’.” 

“H’m. Listen to what the Herald says, ‘Cottrell was 
forced to trial and convicted, in spite of Mayor McNicol’s 
frantic efforts to have the case dropped.’ Get the point? 


THE RARER ALTITUDES 


445 

People won’t believe you’ve changed; they won’t under¬ 
stand your high motives.” 

He picked up the newspaper again. “And this street¬ 
car settlement of yours. Fine thing, of course. Per¬ 
sonally I admire you for being able to put such a thing 
across. A sound business proposition. But you don’t 
seriously believe the people will ratify it?” 

“You bet I do! Why won’t they?” 

Bigelow might have been pitying his friend’s naivete. 
“Because they don’t want a sensible solution; they can’t 
comprehend such things. Because you’ll have every poli¬ 
tician in town against you: the street-car problem is 
their bread and butter, and they don’t intend to have it 
taken away from them; you’ll have a shrewd, cynical 
opposition to fight single-handed. Because the news¬ 
papers won’t neglect to point out your personal friend¬ 
ship with Phil Morgan and to insinuate he’s pulled the 
wool over your eyes—that there must be a nigger in the 
woodpile somewhere.” 

He held up a fourth finger. “And lastly, because this 
settlement is born of political idealism, and as such is 
doomed to failure. It’s too far off the ground. You’re 
committing the folly of sincerity. Listen: people are 
bored by big constructive projects like this. The mob 
doesn’t w r ant to be uplifted; it demands to be fooled by 
its leaders. And there’s a peculiar ill luck that attaches 
to any statesman who starts flying too high-” 

“Oh, rot!” interrupted his client, impatiently, and arose 
to go. “You’re nothin’ but a damn’ snob. Always was. 
As for me, I reckon I’m willin’ to trust the people.” 

“Might have known better than to waste good advice 
on you,” Bigelow admitted, shaking his head mourn¬ 
fully. “Anyway, for heaven’s sake, play this thing safe. 
Submit it to the people without comment. Say you’re 
neither for nor against it—you want them to decide. But 



446 


THE RED-BLOOD 


don’t risk your popularity by sponsoring it yourself. 
Don’t you see, you aren’t up for reelection—you don’t 
have to involve yourself at all.” 

McNicol clenched his fists with intense conviction. 
“I’m a-goin’ to stake everything in it. My whole future! ” 
And there was something almost august in his expres¬ 
sion as he spoke. 


CHAPTER V 


PERIPETY 

I 

^ S he descended the grand staircase, a servant came 
^ around the ornate newel post. 

“The carriage, sir.” 

He nodded. “Where's my wife, d’y’ know?” 

“I think in the kitchen, sir.” 

He w r ent first to the coat closet and put on his over¬ 
coat, for it was the first morning of November and the 
wind was sharp out of doors. Then he hurried past the 
marble nymph, and through the dining room and pantry. 

Lessie stood in front of the natural-gas range, instruct¬ 
ing the new cook in its complex mysteries. 

“Never go turnin’ on a burner while they’s anything on 
top of it,” she cautioned, “or they’s likely t’ be an ex¬ 
plosion.” 

To illustrate the principle, she started to remove the 
frying pan from the burner she purposed igniting; but, 
finding the utensil’s handle hot, she gathered up a loose 
fold of her homely flannel wrapper and made use of it 
to protect her hand from the handle’s heat. She per¬ 
formed the operation swiftly with the familiarity of long 
habit. 

“There now, see?” she inquired. 

McNicol smiled at this characteristic sample of his 
wife’s apnrehensiveness. Explosions, indeed! The idea 
of not lighting the burner underneath the frying pan 
was childish. Lessie was always fearing gruesome catas- 

447 


THE RED-BLOOD 


448 

trophes. She still locked the door of their bedroom 
religiously each night in spite of the one conspicuous 
proof that such precautions might be futile; and ever 
since the burglary, she looked under the bed as well. 

But his smile was tolerant, good humored; there was 
no longer an edge of contemptuous impatience in his 
voice when he spoke. 

“Better be thinkin’ ’bout not gettin’ that wrapper of 
yours too close to the burner, insteada frettin’ ’bout a little 
explosion.” 

Lessie paid no more heed than she would have to a 
six-year-old boy. 

“Goin’ now?” she digressed, then motioned him back 
into the privacy of the dining room with an air that 
he recognized as portentous. 

“Here’s the name an’ address of that stomach spe¬ 
cialist.” She extracted a slip of paper from her pocket. 

“Yes, yes—I know it already.” 

He frowned a little. Lessie had been importuning him 
for weeks to consult the specialist. There was, indeed, 
no gainsaying the chronic disorder of his digestive organs; 
in addition to suffering recurrent spasms of pain, he had 
of late lost considerable weight, and his pallor at times 
was alarming. But he persisted in making light of these 
symptoms, attributing them exclusively to the exhausting 
rigors of the campaign. What other reason could there 
be? Had he not given up whisky entirely? Even cut in 
half his former allotment of ten cigars a day? 

“But you’re to go see the doctor t’-day,” said Lessie. 

“No, can’t to-day, possibly. Too much to do. But 
election’s only five days off now, and as soon’s it’s over 
I promise I’ll go right away.” 

She was not in the slightest degree moved. “I made 
an appointment for you at two o’clock this afternoon, an’ 


PERIPETY 


449 

I want you t’ keep it. Might be something serious wrong 
with you.” 

The manner in which he bowed to this ultimatum 
marked the extent of the alteration in him. For in spite 
of his annoyance, he could now find some comedy in his 
situation. He, the mayor, the man of the hour, with a 
great issue depending solely on his strength—bossed 
around by his wife! Yes, he even enjoyed this ridiculous 
dictation of hers. Lessie was absurd, old-fashioned, in¬ 
conceivably childish in most of her ideas, yet he liked 
her. They were closer together spiritually now than at 
any previous era of their marriage. 

“All right,” he said, shortly. 

“You promise?” Even Lessie was not without a sus¬ 
picion of humor, it seemed. “ ‘Cause I’m a-goin’ to 
call up your office at two, jus’ to make sure.” 

“So?” He grinned. 

She took his arm and they walked toward the carriage 
door. Even the touch of her hand, belying in its de¬ 
pendence the domination she felt it her duty to exercise, 
thrilled him. Unaccountably, as he glanced down at her, 
he seemed to glimpse in her answering look a flicker of 
girlishness—the aloof spirit of her youth, now so deeply 
overlaid with the unchivalrous incrustations of age. How 
unpitying, how indecent of time to have worked this prof¬ 
anation of her first adolescent freshness! 

But his concern for the moment was with that glim¬ 
mering of the young girl, and he wondered a little what 
she was thinking of. 

“Beatrice—I just heard from her.” There was a frac¬ 
tion of hesitation in her accents, for he had not yet for¬ 
given his youngest child. “She’s goin’ to have a baby.” 

For the astonished gratification that welled up in him, 
he might have been that more youthful husband, hear- 



450 THE RED-BLOOD 

ing from Lessie the incredible tidings of her own preg¬ 
nancy. 

“Well!” That was all he could say. He, a grand¬ 
father ! 

“I’m a-goin’ out to see her this morning.” Beatrice and 
her Italian husband were achieving romance in a cottage 
on Sixteenth Street. “Shall I give her any message from 
you, pa?” 

He succumbed. “Sure thing! Tell her I’m cornin’ 
out myself soon’s the campaign's over—or say, why don’t 
w r e ask the both of ’em here to dinner?” 

Lessie’s demeanor proved her appreciation of his mag¬ 
nanimity. Even after he had stepped into the carriage 
and started downtown, he remembered the proud ap¬ 
proval in her eyes, still felt her farewell kiss on his lips. 

Nowadays, it occurred to him, he actually hated leav¬ 
ing the Mausoleum, and looked forward all day to his re¬ 
turn at night. Even his children might turn out all right 
in time. Maty, for example: slowly she was sloughing 
off her abnormalities and steadying down; she had just 
taken a position as a paid social worker; and however 
much he might continue to be baffled by her strange bents, 
there was no denying that the mere circumstance she 
could earn ten dollars a week had greatly increased 
his respect for her. Arthur, too: McNicol was prepared 
to admit the boy might have some good stuff in him— 
if only he -wouldn’t be so cocky, so irritatingly indepen¬ 
dent. And now Bee! He was very happy in the prospect 
of seeing her again. 

“Guess I’m on the right track at last,” he soliloquized. 

It was with an equally deep satisfaction that he turned 
his thoughts to the political situation. 

Artemas Bigelow had been a shrewd prophet in some 
ways. The people had been disappointingly lethargic 
about the proposed street-car settlement; even hostile. 


PERIPETY 


45i 


Most of his political friends had promptly deserted him; 
overnight there had sprung up under the secret leadership 
of Joe Cottrell an organized opposition that had not 
scrupled to play shamelessly upon the electorate’s prej¬ 
udices and fears—to impute the basest motives to him, 
to arouse mob hatred against the railway corporation, to 
cry out against even a conditional extension of franchises 
—to make use of any weapon, in brief, save logical argu¬ 
ment. The newspapers, too—all save the Sun , once his 
bitterest opponent—had raised an immense hue and cry 
against the project, misrepresenting his position, burying 
his speeches in obscure corners while flaunting his ene¬ 
mies 5 from the front pages. Lastly, the reform element, 
upon which he might have counted for support, arrayed 
itself solidly against him. The Rev. Ronald Beemish 
was particularly scathing. 

“You’ll have to fight single-handed,” Bigelow had pre¬ 
dicted; and it was so. 

But what a fight! McNicol had worked day and night, 
clumsily yet with fanatical energy; abetted by a strength 
that seemed not his own, but some magical effluence 
from his burning cause itself. And his superhuman ef¬ 
forts had begun to count. His audiences at first were 
bored, even as Bigelow had foreseen; but gradually his 
profound earnestness had taken hold. People cheered 
him now every time he spoke. The Globe’s first straw 
vote, late in the summer, had revealed a majority of four 
to one against the proposal; a second tally, taken a fort¬ 
night ago, showed less than one-and-a-half to one. 

Yes, he was gaining ground each day, and everybody 
knew it. A bet had been placed in a downtown saloon only 
yesterday, at even money. 

This morning, therefore, he rode downtown with a 
secure and serene faith in his victory. 

On the right track at last—yes, that was it—after all 


THE RED-BLOOD 


452 

his blind fiounderings, all his arrogant stupidities of the 
past. 

He thought of his mother. “If only she was alive to 
see what I’ve done!” But surely her presence was with 
him still. Surely her blessing was upon him, even from 
beyond the grave. 

He had redeemed his promise to God, too; and God had 
forgiven him and spared him further punishment for 
his sins. 

Bigelow had started to say something sinister about ill 
fortune; and at the recollection McNicol smiled dis- 
sentingly. 

“If a man does his best, if he lets his best side govern 
him—like I’m doin’ now—no harm can come to him.” 

It was his hour of supreme happiness. 

Awaiting him at the office, however, he found a letter 
that did not quite jibe with this confident theory. From 
a firm of lawyers, it was, setting forth that they had been 
retained by one Evans to bring suit for alienation of his 
wife’s affections, possibly to press criminal proceedings 
for adultery as well; and calling upon the Great Man to 
make satisfactory adjustment of damages not later than 
Saturday, or suffer condign consequence. 

11 

But tranquillity returned to him Saturday afternoon 
when Artemas »Bigelow brought over a formal receipt 
and release, signed by Irma’s husband. 

“Perfectly preposterous amount to pay that loafer,” he 
insisted. “I doubt if he could have recovered a nickel 
from you in court. But you would settle with him.” 

“I’d have paid ten times as much,” McNicol averred. 
“How’d it ’ve looked in to-morrow mornin’s papers, ay? 
What’d my wife say? What’d the voters think? Man 


PERIPETY 


453 

alive, the scandal ’d jus’ be enough to swing the election 
the other way.” 

“I suppose you’re right. Evans’ lawyers knew it, too— 
worse luck! That’s why they insisted on a settlement 
to-day. They realized they had you where they could 
shake you down.” 

The Mayor wiped his forehead. “Well, anyway, there’s 
an end to that!” 

“Here’s hoping!” Bigelow still had the habit of pessi¬ 
mistic innuendo. 

“Hopin’! What you mean by that?” 

“Oh, nothing. The thing that puzzles me about this 
business is where Joe Cottrell comes in. Not the slightest 
doubt in my mind he’s the one who engineered it, just to 
make you sweat. Yet if that’s so, why didn’t he have 
Evans file suit at once and get the story into the papers?” 

“ ’Cause he knew darned well the only reason I’d 
settle was to hush things up; once the news leaked out, 
I wouldn’t give a nickel.” 

“Of course, of course—but Cottrell doesn’t want your 
money, he wants your blood. He wants to do for you— 
see? Losing a few thousand dollars wouldn’t hurt you 
much; but losing the election, losing your reputation, 
would” 

“Sure—that’s all right,” McNicol diagnosed, “but 
Evans’d want money. Evans wouldn’t give a hang about 
this election, one way or another.” 

“That’s probably it, but if there’s any way Cottrell 
can use it against you-” 

“But they ain't, is they—not after Evans has taken 
my money and signed up?” 

“I can’t think of any way,” Bigelow admitted, almost 
regretfully. “Certainly none of the newspapers would 
touch it, as long as it stays a private matter. Come to 
think of it, the Evans outfit would a little prefer to keep it 





454 


THE RED-BLOOD 


dark, I’d think—so they could play the same game on 
some other rich man. No, I guess you’re safe.” 

When, therefore, a little later on in the afternoon, Mc- 
Nicol snatched time to pay his second visit to the stomach 
specialist, he was again in a buoyantly peaceful mood. 
He had escaped this latest grave threat to his happiness, 
after two days of corroding anxiety; and now his labors 
were almost over for the present. There remained but 
one final mass meeting for him to address this evening. 
Sunday and Monday would both be comparatively quiet— 
and Tuesday, the election and the triumph of truth over 
wickedness! 

He was glad it was so, for he had begun to feel the 
heavy drain upon his strength. 

“The right track, at last,” he repeated, still again. 

It had disquieted him a little, to tell the truth, that 
God had ever permitted Evans to reappear and harass 
him in the crisis; but it now seemed plain that this 
was but the Almighty’s final test of his sincerity. 

“Yes,” he corroborated. “I remained steadfast in the 
faith, and once more He delivered me.” 

It was with this sense of implicit reliance that he came 
to the specialist’s suite of offices. But when he departed 
thence into the gathering twilight of the street, a half 
hour later, he was a limp and pitiful figure. 

“I’m afraid there’s no getting away from the facts,” 
the physician had said with elaborate impersonality. “You 
have a carcinoma of the stomach.” 

Must be something serious judging from his voice. 
McNicoJ couldn’t for the life of him remember what a 
carcinoma was. 

“Had I better give up smokin’ altogether?” 

“Don’t believe that would help much now. Of course 
we can operate if you want, though at your age I wouldn’t 


PERIPETY 


455 

advise it. But by dropping everything and pampering 
yourself, you may keep on for some time yet.” 

“Keep on—?” A horrible dread had prowled through 
McNicol’s vitals. “Look here, what’ve I got?” 

“Carcinoma, I said. . . . Stomach ulcer that’s developed 
into cancer.” 

“Cancer!” McNicol could understand that word well 
enough. He had gulped. “You mean I’m a-goin’ to die 
—right away?” 

“Oh no,” the specialist had discriminated lightly. “Not 
right away. A year, perhaps—but as I say, by dropping 
everything . . . possibly a year and a half, even two-” 

hi 

It speaks well for McNicol’s courage that by the time 
he reached the front door of the Mausoleum he had 
braced himself to the crushing catastrophe. 

No easy matter, though. At first, it seemed to him he 
could not possibly walk back to the City Hall. Such 
was the power of suggestion of the specialist’s pronounce¬ 
ment, that he fancied himself already dying. His mind 
seethed with bitter denunciations of Jehovah. What had 
he done to deserve this appalling and obscene fate? Of 
what avail was it to turn from evil to righteousness 
if God struck one down notwithstanding? 

Gradually, however, his toughness of fiber had reas¬ 
serted itself. After all, this new reformation of his was 
built of sincerer stuff than the hope of personal reward. 
All men had to die, surely; there was nothing unprece¬ 
dented in that. 

The thought suddenly shot through his brain: “I 
been spared just long enough to put through this one big 
thing. If I can die, leavin’ the street-car fight settled 



THE RED-BLOOD 


456 

fair, for all time, I won’t have lived in vain. My work 
will survive anyhow.” 

Thus he dismounted from the carriage and walked up 
the steps, erect and still unbroken. All his ache, the 
shock of death’s imminence, the frustration of his greater 
ambitions for the future, seemed to find sublimation into 
the passionate desire to leave at least this one perpetual 
monument to the greatness that might have been his. 

But as he opened the door and entered the hallway 
he crumpled a little. Lessie—he had not thought of her. 
How should he tell her, and when? 

Suddenly, he found himself face to face with a little 
group of people—descried Lessie, a suitcase in her hand, 
weeping violently. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked, and his heart seemed 
to flounder. 

Lessie choked. “Don’t come near me! I—I jus’ found 
out about her” 

Reverend Beemish flourished a letter. “This scarlet 
woman has written your wife, accusing you of having 
lived with her in unholy lust,” he pontificated. “I told 
Sister McNicol she ought not to leave her home until she 
had given you an opportunity to deny the charge, even 
though there were certain evidences—” He coughed sig¬ 
nificantly. 

Lessie looked up at her husband with piteous and 
miserable eyes. “Oh, pa—say it ain’t so!” 

McNicol, discovering he could not lie, stared down at 
the carpet. 

“That settles it!” came Jenny’s voice, with obvious 
relish. 

Beemish took the suitcase from Lessie. “I’m afraid 
so—and may God be with you, sister, in your great 
affliction.” 

“Wait a minute!” The culprit at last found his tongue. 


PERIPETY 


457 


“I can explain everything.” If only he could be rid 
of these other harpies who stood between him and his 
wife, who were inciting her against him. “Let me talk 
t’ you a minute all alone, ma—won’t you?” 

Lessie glanced at her advisers, then shook her head. 

“There’s nothing to explain,” Beemish interpreted 
sharply. “Either you committed adultery or you did 
not.” ' ■ 

“I did, I did!” He must make his appeal to his wife 
in the presence of these aliens, or not at all. “I sinned, 
but I repented. I made my peace with God. Don’t 
you remember, Lessie—we was angry at each other, and 
mebbe you was bearin’ down a bit hard on me. So I 
done it—but it’s all past, I swear it. Been past for months. 
That woman hates me because I left her, can’t you see, 
Lessie? Joe Cottrell, one of my political enemies, put 
her up to doin’ this, jus’ to get even with me. . . . Look 
how happy we been since I reformed, ma. Y’ ain’t for- 
gettin’ that? And that’s just the way we’ll keep on bein’ 
if you’ll only forgive me.” 

Jenny spat out a sarcastic inquiry: “Why was it you 
didn’t ask Lessie’s forgiveness before? Why’d you wait 
till you got found out? You wouldn’t never have told 
her, only for this letter, would you?” 

This seemed, in her eyes and Beemish’s, to afford con¬ 
clusive proof of his vileness. But Mary surprisingly 
elected to take his side. 

“Now, mother, you surely don’t want to go.” She 
took Lessie’s arm persuasively. “Father’s confessed his 
fault; he’s sorry for what happened; he’s asked your 
forgiveness. The Bible tells us we mustn’t refuse forgive¬ 
ness when it’s asked, doesn’t it?” 

“Forgiveness, yes,” Beemish again intervened authori¬ 
tatively. “But your father must make atonement by 
suffering. I’m sure Sister McNicol forgives him, but 


458 THE RED-BLOOD 

that doesn’t mean it’s her duty to go on living with 
him.” 

There was not even forgiveness, however, in Lessie’s 
wounded look. Any other sin—drunkenness, desertion, 
nonsupport, even brutality—she would have condoned 
freely. But not physical infidelity; to her, as to her 
generation, that was the one unforgetable wrong. 

“We’ll be goin’,” she said, in hard, clipped tones. 

McNicol remembered one last heroic dissuasive. 
“Listen!” he pleaded. “Maybe I ain’t got long to live. 
The doctor-” 

But Lessie either did not hear or did not care, for she 
shook her head once more and moved toward the door. 

“Stand aside!” commanded Reverend Beemish. 

“But where you goin’?” 

“To Arthur’s house—that’s where!” This from the 
acidulous Jenny. “We’re goin’ to wait out on the front 
porch till he comes for her. She won’t stay in your 
house another minute.” 

“Arthur!” 

“Yes, Arthur. She’s going to stay with him till she 
gets her divorce.” 

“Why, that’s nonsense!” put in Mary, indignantly. 
“What does she want a divorce for? Think of the news¬ 
paper notoriety!” 

Beemish closed his thin lips inexorably. “Perhaps not 
a divorce, but a legal separation. She’s going to begin 
proceedings immediately.” 

Divorce—newspaper notoriety—begin proceedings im¬ 
mediately. The phrases repercussed in McNicol’s dazed 
mind. He thought: 

“If she does that, if this thing gets into print before 
Tuesday, I’ll lose the election.” 

Anything to prevent that. He reached the heights of 
self-immolation. It did not matter in the slightest what 



PERIPETY 


459 

happened to him, if only his immeasurably precious set¬ 
tlement were not defeated. 

“Listen!” he halted the exodus at the very door. “You 
don’t need to do anything like that. Think of the dis¬ 
grace to the children! I won’t bother you. I won’t try 
to make y’ live with me. You don’t have to leave the 
house. If anybody’s to go, I’ll be the one.” 

Beemish was not mollified, but Jenny evidently con¬ 
sidered the proposal worth debating. 

“Right away?” she demanded. 

When the owner of the Mausoleum took his departure, 
ten minutes later, he encountered a young man mounting 
the porch steps. 

“Hello!” said the youth. 

McNicol perceived it was his recreant son, Arthur. 
Arthur—who had fled the Mausoleum’s tyranny, who had 
disdained thus far even to cross its threshold—now re¬ 
turning to assume undisputed mastery. 

The two passed each other with an awkward nod— 
the old and the new, the supplanted and his successor, 
the conquered and the conqueror. 

Yet McNicol was suffused, not with despairing exaspera¬ 
tion, but with an odd and exquisite joy. And that night 
at the great mass meeting which wound up the street- 
railway-settlement campaign, he spoke, as did St. Paul, 
pure flame. 


IV 

His few loyal friends, who had assembled in the mayoral 
office to hear the election returns Tuesday night, slipped 
away one by one as the vote tabulations indicated more 
and more cumulatively that the settlement project had 
been lost—till at midnight only Artemas Bigelow re¬ 
mained. 

He it was who answered the telephone ring. “The Sun," 


4 6o THE RED-BLOOD 

he divulged, “wants to know if you concede defeat.” 

“Never!” 

Although by this time three fourths of the precincts had 
reported, McNicol still clung grimly to the hope of vic¬ 
tory. 

There followed a number of returns that registered 
majorities in favor of the agreement, and his hope merged 
into certainty. After that, however, there came the same 
dull procession of adverse scores. 

“Over ninety-five per cent accounted for now,” Bigelow 
computed at one o’clock. “We’re seven thousand votes 
behind; and even if the missing precincts are unanimous 
in our favor, we can’t catch up.” He turned to the mes¬ 
senger who had been bringing the returns from the city 
clerk’s office. “Don’t bother with any more, boy. Get to 
bed.” 

A moment later he answered the telephone again. 

“Yes,” he said, without even asking his chief, “the 
mayor admits defeat.” 

Then he returned to the desk. “Well—coming?” 

McNicol sat in his swivel chair, staring blankly. He 
did not seem to hear the question, and Bigelow repeated 
it. Since Saturday, they had been sharing the attorney’s 
bachelor apartment together. 

At the repetition, the mayor shook his head slightly. 

“There’s no use waiting any longer.” Then, perceiving 
that his friend wanted to be left alone, Bigelow patted 
his shoulder gently. 

“Don’t regret!” His voice, also, was unusually gentle, 
for he knew both of the specialist’s verdict and the do¬ 
mestic cataclysm. “Your only fault was that you aimed 
too high. Nature always frowns upon the idealist, you 
knew—always showers her misfortunes upon him. Every 
statesman has had to learn that bitter lesson.” He shook 
hands in farewell. “And yet, to me, this is undoubtedly 


PERIPETY 


461 


the finest moment in your life. Men are only great in 
their impossible aspirations and in their splendid failures.” 

McNicol continued to stare unseeingly at his desk, a 
devastated expression of utter melancholy in his lusterless 
eyes. He did not move or speak—save once, when the 
memory of all he had suffered during the past few days 
found outlet in the agonized, eternal question: 

“O God—what’s all this mean?” And he tweaked his 
eyebrows wearily. 

Otherwise he remained wholly inert and impenetrable. 
A janitress found him still sitting at his desk at early 
dawn. 




BOOK FIVE: —AND THEN 











BOOK FIVE: —AND THEN 

i i 

CHAPTER I 

YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM 

I 

L ATE Christmas afternoon of the year 1900—some 
fourteen months after the debacle of the street-car 
settlement—two persons alighted from a closed carriage 
at the Mausoleum’s porte-cochere—the first a woman of 
about thirty, who sedulously attended her companion; the 
second, a shrunken pantaloon of sixty, very feeble and 
distressingly pallid. 

The woman, assisted by the coachman, conducted the 
old gentleman up the porch steps and thence silently 
through the door and hallway into the library. 

“Now, father,” she said with the manner of having 
engineered a difficult but thoroughly pleasing feat, “sup¬ 
pose you sit here a bit while I find out the lay of the land.” 

“Thank you, Mary.” The invalid contrived a faint, 
pitiful smile. There was between them, indeed, the air 
of exciting conspiracy: Mary, who alone of the children 
had kept closely in touch with her father’s circumstances, 
now deemed the time ripe for a reconciliation, and had 
spirited him back into his former home with a view to 
effecting that commendable result. 

“What d’ you think?” he implored, anxiously. “Will 
she be willin’ to see me?” 

“Of course she will! Not that she’s said anything, 
but I know mother’s never had a happy day since you 
left. When she first heard about your illness last week, 

465 


THE RED-BLOOD 


466 

she cried—in fact, she’s been crying ever since, whenever 
she thinks she’s not being noticed.” 

It was evident he was on the margin of tears himself, 
and Mary went on quickly with spurious briskness: 

“Now, now—you promised not to. Don’t you see, all 
your troubles are over now? You’ll never have to go back 
to the hospital. You’re going to stay right here, from 
to-day on, and first thing you know we’ll have you all 
well again.” 

o 

McNicol shook his head to indicate he was not deceived, 
but he looked after her fondly as she hurried out of the 
library. What a fine girl she was, to be sure—this Mary, 
whom he had always censured so harshly. All her freak¬ 
ishness, all her restless abnormality, seemed to have dis¬ 
appeared as she grew older. She reminded him of Ellen 
Foss a little in the full perfection of her poise, yet she 
radiated a certain warm-hearted fortitude that Ellen, if 
she had it, could never succeed in expressing. Arthur, 
too—that other ugly duckling of the family—was turning 
out well: he and Gavly O’Brien had struck out so vigor¬ 
ously that McNicol & Company were compelled in self- 
preservation to buy out the new venture; both of the 
young buccaneers were on the board of directors now, 
and in a fair way to dominate the great concern in time. 
Of course, Arthur was not Mary, but he had been unex¬ 
pectedly friendly, in an awkward way. 

While Bee—her father’s pride, the one child whom he 
had deeply cared for— No, Bee had not come to much. 
And he doubted now whether she had ever really loved 
him; during the long bleak days he had lain alone in one 
hospital or another, the prone victim of the irresistible 
wastage of his disease, she had visited him only once. 

And alas! How similar the neglect of most of his 
friends! Perhaps they didn’t understand how lonely a 
man could be, slowly dying in a hospital room. With his 



YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM 467 

resignation from office, he had seemed to drop out of life 
immediately, as through a trap door. There was a new 
mayor now—a Democrat at that!—swept into power on 
a tide of denunciations of the street-car company, of 
solemn promises to bring that bloodthirsty corporation to 
its knees instanter. The name of McNicol was never 
mentioned these days. He was on the shelf, impotent, 
futile, with no longer a single excuse for existence. 

The old gentleman sitting in the library armchair shook 
his head sadly, and his eyes—the moist eyes of an aged 
Skye terrier—shone dully through the thickets of his 
whitening brows. 

“How soon men are forgotten.” 

Life was a policeman, he reflected, incessantly shout¬ 
ing: “Pass on! Keep moving—don’t block the traffic. 
Pass on!” 

But it was Beatrice, because he loved her, who had 
wounded him most. 

All at once he became aware of penetrating wails, faint 
and yet somehow near. 

“Funny!” 

At length he found his feet and made his difficult way 
to the window. Just outside, on a sheltered side porch, 
stood a white wicker baby carriage; and it was from 
beneath the conveyance’s hood that the sounds of protest 
were issuing. 

Bee’s six-months-old infant, beyond doubt. McNicol 
became intensely interested. He had heard about the 
prodigy; it had been named after him, in fact—Welling¬ 
ton 1 McNicol Pasco. Yet he had never seen it. 

But the baby was crying! And no wonder—left out in 
the cold that way. A careless nursemaid, probably. The 
thing was monstrous! 

Indignant and excited, he shambled out into the hall- 

1 See Preface. 


THE RED-BLOOD 


468 

way. then, in spite of his own defenselessness, out through 
a door upon the porch. Hardly had he succeeded in wheel¬ 
ing the carriage within, however, when Beatrice herself 
poiinced upon him. 

‘‘Here—what are you up to?" Xo affectionate greet¬ 
ing. no evidence she was glad to see him. 

“Some fool nurse put him out there-" 

“Xo. no—that's where he sleeps every afternoon. 
Heaven knows we’ve had a hard enough time getting him 
used to it. without people interfering with his schedule!” 

“But it's cold out there and he's cryin’!” 

“Oh, stuff!” She jerked the handle of the carriage 
from the anxious grandfather's hands. “Xow he'll be 
spoiled for a week.*’ 

There was no doubt about Bee’s having faded. Life 
with Cesare Pasco in the Sixteenth Street cottage had 
palled: there had been bitter acrimonies, both of them 
being afflicted with uncurbed tempers; after the baby’s 
birth Pasco had departed to his native Italy, and Bea¬ 
trice—like Jenny, a disenchanted and shrewish woman— 
had returned to the Mausoleum. Like Jenny’s, her vivid 
beauty had passed in a moment, it seemed, at first con¬ 
tact with life's harshness. Like Jenny, she would be an 
old woman at twenty-five. 

McXicol pleaded, “Can't I have a bit of a look at 
him?” 

“Xo. not now.” And when, nevertheless, he stooped 
close over the blankets, she cried out, horrified and re¬ 
volted: “Don't! Don’t kiss him!” 

Mercifully enough, while Beatrice was engaged in 
reconsigning the baby to the rigors of an up-to-date 
schedule. Mary reappeared. 

“I’ve broken the news to mother—at least I told her I 
thought you mieht be here for Christmas dinner. She 
was all excited—first she started to cry again, and then 




YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM 469 

she rushed down to the kitchen to ask the cook to bake 
another apple pie for you.” 

He shook his head ruefully. “ ’Fraid I can’t manage 
anything like that. Just a little broth or something.” 

“But to-day—she’ll be so disappointed.” 

The freckled Arthur had also descended the staircase 
and was shaking hands cordially. 

“Tell you,” he suggested. “Why don’t you go into the 
kitchen now and surprise her?” 

The idea appealed to all three—to McNicol especially, 
inasmuch as this procedure would spare both Lessie and 
himself the embarrassments of a public reconciliation. 

The two children guided him to the pantry door, and 
departed. Beatrice had returned upstairs. 

He pushed back the swinging door a little and peered 
into the kitchen. Lessie, not expecting him to arrive for 
another hour, had not yet changed her familiar flannel 
wrapper for more formal attire. She stood at a table, 
her back partly turned toward him. Even in these latter 
days of magnificence, she still liked to putter about the 
Mausoleum’s spacious kitchen; and now she was busying 
herself with the rapid paring of apples. In all her quick 
movements was revealed a certain joyous restlessness. 
The cook was not visible. 

Just then there came the slight odor of scorching from 
a saucepan of cranberries stewing on the stove, as if they 
had boiled dry. He saw Leslie turn quickly, test the 
temperature of the saucepan’s handle, then—as she had 
done hundreds of times before—gather up a fold of her 
wrapper and apply it to the hot handle, with the intention 
of removing the saucepan from the stove. 

McNicol’s heart beat fast at the pleasant and homely 
associations of the scene. His wife’s face, flushed with 
exertion or expectancy, was turned in his direction now. 



470 


THE RED-BLOOD 


He found it difficult to believe, indeed, she had not seen 
him as she came to the stove. 

He could not wait longer. “Lessie!” 

She raised her eyes in startled happiness, recognizing 
his voice even before she saw him. 

Then she dropped the saucepan with a cry of pain. A 
flame leaped from the stove burner up the arm of her 
flannel wrapper, and instantly the whole garment seemed 
ablaze. 

McNicol, endeavoring to fling himself upon her, fell 
weakly to the floor. 


ii 

Two mornings later, he sat in his wife’s bedroom— 
their bedroom once—the same chamber that had witnessed 
the unhappy demise of Babe. 

And now she herself was dying, so the doctor said. As 
McNicol watched her bandaged figure, noted the twitch- 
ings of pain that occasionally skimmed across her inert 
face, he was musing upon the ironic destiny that ordained 
that Lessie, after a lifetime of apprehensive precautions 
against every conceivable form of accident—precautions 
against fire, especially—should now have been brought 
to book by the operation of sheer indeterminate chance. 

That the disaster had occurred at the very moment 
of reconciliation—that he, indeed, by pronouncing her 
name at the wrong juncture was perhaps to blame— 
seemed more than he could bear. And throughout his 
long vigil at her side, there had come no personal message 
to him from her; when she was not wholly unconscious, 
she was monopolized by excruciating physical torment. 

Only her nose and mouth protruded from the mummy¬ 
like swathings that encompassed her head. At the spec¬ 
tacle he was indescribably wrung. That nose and mouth 


YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM 471 

seemed so piteous, so precious—the only vestiges of her 
that remained to him. 

She was to pass away, then, without ever an interval of 
blessed communion to seal her forgiveness. 

He noted all at once, however, a slight gesture of her 
arm. He took the bandaged hand gently, but eagerly; 
and through the cloths felt the unmistakable pressure of 
her fingers upon his. 

“Lessie!” he cried out once more. 

Her lips moved with a whisper of exquisite docility: 
“Real nice of you t’ come, pa.” 


CHAPTER II 


WHEN LIFE SLIPS ITS TETHER 

I 

A FTER a week of April rain, there had come three 
'L*- fine warm days. Toward the close of Sunday after¬ 
noon, therefore, he fared forth from his mother’s house in 
the dilapidated buggy, owned by his brother Glen, and 
driven by the latter’s fourteen-year-old son, Glen, junior. 

McNicol had come to Cartwright a fortnight earlier 
on what was politely called a “visit.” To tell the truth, 
his three months at the Mausoleum had not been felici¬ 
tous. Mary and Arthur were kind to him, but they were 
both away most of the time. Beatrice and he did not 
get along well together; there had been constant acerbities 
over the care of the baby; for he was instantly drawn to 
his grandson and insisted that the infant was not receiving 
suitable attention or food. There were quarrels, also, 
over the mansion’s temperature: McNicol was constantly 
demanding more heat, but Beatrice would go around 
opening windows, even in the dead of winter. Then, too, 
the sore afflictions of his disease made him a troublesome 
and fault-finding care—as Bee w r ould have phrased it, 
“a perfect nuisance around the house.” She was not of 
the stuff that makes good nurses; she resented the addi¬ 
tional complications his presence caused—special food, 
constant attendance, irritating and inconvenient demands. 
In brief, she did not want him there; and in this senti¬ 
ment she had the support of Aunt Jenny, who never had 

472 


WHEN LIFE SLIPS ITS TETHER 


473 


forgiven McNicol the fact she had done him an injury, 
and who now took unconcealed pleasure in the circum¬ 
stance that she was apparently destined to outlive both 
her sister and her sister’s husband. He still owned the 
Mausoleum, still held the family purse strings; both Bee 
and Aunt Jenny were still dependent upon his charity, 
and he might have ejected them from the house; but he 
was scarcely in the mood or the physical condition to take 
up arms against them. 

“Why don’t you go to Cartwright for a little visit?” 
Beatrice had suggested, late in March. “It’s getting warm 
enough, and the trip would do you good.” 

He was not at all duped by her persuasions; but the 
idea appealed to him. He was tired of strife and domestic 
acrimony. The thought of the hills and fields of his Cana¬ 
dian birthplace came to him with a sense of unutterably 
sweet peace. He knew as well as Beatrice it was a 
visit from which he would never return. Well, if he must 
die—as indeed he must, soon—what better place than 
Cartwright? There it was, certainly, that he wanted to be 
buried. The specialist had sanctioned the trip. After all, 
there was nothing to be done in cancer cases, he reasoned. 
His patient might linger along a few weeks more for hav¬ 
ing the benefits of expert treatment; but under any cir¬ 
cumstances the end was inevitable in one month, two 
months—possibly three or even four months. Some one 
in Cartwright could give McNicol the morphine hypo¬ 
dermics that mercifully minimized his agony. 

Mary—Mary, of course—had brought him here, and 
in another four weeks she would be back to be with him 
to the end. But, there being now no doctor in the mori¬ 
bund village, it was the fourteen-year-old boy, Glen, who 
five or six times daily quenched the invalid’s torture with 
the hypodermic needle, who prepared broth, who per¬ 
formed all the drudgery incident to such a situation. 


474 


THE RED-BLOOD 


McNicol paid his servitor handsomely, to be sure; but 
there had come into being between them a relationship 
that transcended the mere cash nexus. Glen was not 
heavy and phlegmatic like his father; already he had 
definite ambitions; he intended to go to Toronto and 
study law. He had an unmistakable alert determination; 
and McNicol, recognizing in him the reincarnation of his 
own youth, loved the boy, and had already made pro¬ 
vision to insure his legal education. 

Throughout the week of rain the stricken man had 
fretted at the necessary confinement; and this afternoon 
he was imbued with a wistful gratitude to the benignant 
sunshine. For he had set his heart on achieving the brink 
of the limestone escarpment once more before he died. 

ii 

Glen had just helped his uncle over the cemetery fence 
and himself was about to follow, when they both heard 
a whistle and perceived another boy running toward them 
along the Drayton road. 

This second youth carried a shotgun. “C’m on an’ go 
huntin’ over ’n the patch!” 

Glen returned to the road, shaking his head conscien¬ 
tiously. “Can’t.” 

“Aw—why not?” The boy cast a resentful glance in 
McNicol’s direction; then with the usual juvenile assump¬ 
tion that elderly gentlemen have no ears, demanded 
loudly: “Say—who’s that old man?” 

Glen, with an impalpable cautioning gesture, reduced 
the ensuing colloquy to a considerate whisper. 

But McNicol had heard. Old man! Instinctively he 
looked around, under the misapprehension that the boy 
must have been referring to some one else, some concealed 
person who was really old—say eighty. He himself was 


WHEN LIFE SLIPS ITS TETHER 


475 

scarcely sixty; still “middle-aged,” as he conceived it. 
But there was no escaping the melancholy certainty that 
the boy had really been describing him. Absurd—yet 
his heart was chilled. 

An old man! 

Perhaps so—but not too old to have forgotten the thrill 
of hunting in “the patch.” 

“Glen!” he called. “You go along, if you want to.” 

“Oh no, uncle. I don’t care nothin’ ’bout-” 

“Ha-ha!” the pantaloon cackled. “I’ll be all right 
from now on. You have your fun and come back in two 
hours. That ’ll be six o’clock, and I won’t be needin’ 
another injection till seven, you know.” 

With a reluctance that was partly genuine, Glen climbed 
back into the buggy; the boy with the shotgun did like¬ 
wise with unfeigned alacrity; and the conveyance moved 
down the road. 

McNicol set off cautiously along the almost obliterated 
path over the soft carpet of hemlock needles. It was not 
unselfishness solely that had prompted him to dismiss his 
nephew. He wanted to experience the present quest to 
the full, alone and undistracted; for he might never be 
passing this way again. 

How could he share his indelible memories with 
another? Every step seemed to bring its teeming quota 
of pungent associations—each neglected headstone lean¬ 
ing forlornly backward or forward, each pitiful desiccated 
wreath on its long-forgotten grave. A welter of decay 
and dissolution—yet now he appeared to be advancing 
hand in hand with that terror-stricken, miserable run¬ 
away boy who was himself. 

He found himself vaguely wondering what had become 
of Aleck Grizard and his wife—yes, and that baby of 
theirs! 

There was with him, too, the specter of the young man 



THE RED-BLOOD 


476 

returning from medical school, strong and resolute. Here 
it was, precisely, he had picked up that lace handkerchief. 
“J. G.” Jenny’s it had been—that handsome romantic 
girl. And now he could dimly envisage that same shelter, 
under the intermeshed pine trees, where he had twice 
found protection from April torrents, and whence his 
precipitate intrusion had driven Jenny and the elegant 
Professor Evanturel. Even at this instant he caught him¬ 
self speculating as to just what the twain had been up to. 

April. “Why, this is April, too,” he whispered. 

He paused an instant, as if to survey the family graves, 
then pressed on to the verge of the escarpment, from which 
he had had the inspired vision that was to fashion his 
whole life. 

The unfolded panorama was superb, even now. The 
town itself might continue to molder away into bleak 
desolation; but the nobility of the terrain was indestructi¬ 
ble, everlasting. His eye wandered up along the willow- 
margined course of the Conestoga—past the ruins of the 
mill and distillery, and the poplar grove whence still 
emerged the sorrel shoulders of the Gough house—till it 
reached the hills above and beyond. 

The valley and the lower hills were immersed in bril¬ 
liant sunshine; but halfway up the bald slope of Mount 
Judah, directly north, he beheld a shadow drifting slowly 
eastward. Faintly surprised—for he had earlier remarked 
the sky’s immaculate azure—he looked up and discerned 
a great, cumulus cloud making its majestic and solitary 
way across the heavens. 

He continued to regard it for several moments, though 
the spectacle was not in itself unusual. The sun was 
already nearing the western horizon, and it incarnadined 
the not far-distant billows of the cloud to a florid glory. 

A glory that was the flush of early youth. A flamboyant 
ruddiness that was McNicoPs own that day he had stood 


WHEN LIFE SLIPS ITS TETHER 


477 

thus on the escarpment and planned out his life with con¬ 
fident assurance: 

“ril marry Jenny Gough. And I’ll make money. And 
be a Great Man.” 

But now he looked down at the ground with sad disillu¬ 
sion. Yes, he had achieved his three resolves—in sub¬ 
stance, at least: for Lessie had been a finer woman than 
Jenny. Yet what had it all availed him, and what at the 
last had he come to? 

What had life taught him? One thing only—and that 
was a lesson he would have scorned as a youth. Yet it 
was something: patience . . . acceptance. 

There was in him even now little capacity for detach¬ 
ment. He was still bewildered by the abruptness with 
which he had seemingly been betrayed by his “best 
side,” the swift convergence of disaster at the very hour 
in which he had sloughed off his baser motives. Yet now, 
as he stood surveying the cloud and the sunlit valley and 
hills, he became aware of unsuspected springs of consola¬ 
tion flowing up into his soul; and it manifested itself 
to him comfortingly that his stumbling aspirations, his 
belated gropings upward toward the light, comprised the 
precious stuff of greatness. 

He could even think of the defeat of his one splendid 
project with some degree of philosophy. 

“I forgot the sugar-coatin',” he mused, half humor¬ 
ously. “But what I done counted, just the same. . . . 
And sugar-coatin' ain't always a-goin’ to be necessary in 
politics,” he added, reflecting optimistically upon the birth 
of the new century. 

All at once he noted that the sun was gone. The cloud, 
now halfway on its journey across the sky toward Mount 
Judah, was no longer enkindled with the roseate flush of 
youth, but more subtly tinged with a saffron pink, almost 
sallow. 

























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THE COMMON WAY 
DR. LAVENDAR’S PEOPLE 
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THE HANDS OF ESAU 
THE AWAKENING OF HELENA 
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THE IRON WOMAN 

OLD CHESTER TALES 

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R. J.’S MOTHER 

THE VOICE 

THE WAY TO PEACE 

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By Herbert A. Miller and Robert E. Park 

Vol. IV 

A STAKE IN THE LAND 

By Peter A. Speek 

Vol. V 

IMMIGRANT HEALTH AND THE 
COMMUNITY By Michael M. Davis 

Vol. VI 

NEW HOMES FOR OLD 

By Sophonisba P. Breckenridge 

Vol. VII 

THE IMMIGRANT PRESS AND ITS 
CONTROL By Robert E. Park 


Vol. VIII AMERICANS BY CHOICE 


Vol. IX 

By John Palmer Gavit 

THE IMMIGRANT’S DAY IN COURT 

By Kate Holladay Claghorn 


Price, $2.50 per volume 


HARPER & BROTHERS * .* Publishers 


Panel No. 112 























